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My inner identity has been shaped by my hairstyle. What does that say about me?

Dominic Medford
3 min readOct 1, 2021

I stood in front of the mirror this morning looking at what can only be described as a mop of dark hair on my head, extending over 15 inches in some places.

Now for some context I never thought I would of had hair this long. I still constantly have my mother astonished every time I see her. Her new way of greeting me always consists of some sort of marvelled remark about her never imagining that her son would have hair longer than a military buzz cut.

Well who is to blame her for that. Both my father and grandfather had buzz cuts and I was born to what she thought was the same fate. I went for 17 years not knowing that I could anything different. That all changed when I went to university and decided to grow my hair out to get a ‘professional lawyers side part’ hairstyle. I was conditioned to think that a side part was what I needed as I progressed through university and was seeking a professional job in the legal sector. I began to internalise that my appearance, particularly my hairstyle along with a corporate suit would be a defining part of who I was and who I would continue to be as I became who I thought that I wanted to be.

Fast forward to March 2020, I was only back in Australia 4 weeks since having to quickly return from South Korea as the Covid-19…

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Dominic Medford
Dominic Medford

Written by Dominic Medford

Law and Political Sciences student in Australia who dabbles in writing about his thought processes in his spare time with the hope that it can be insightful.

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