GUY
As a guy, you don't need to do makeup; you have to brush your teeth, put on clothes, all the basics, but in terms of appearance, the biggest thing is hair. So I associate hair with being ready for the day.
I have pretty dry hair, and I got really self conscious for about a year because I heard my mom and my aunt talking about my hair. They used the word gorossu, which in Sinhalese means dry, but it sounds like 'gross'. So for a long time I thought they just thought my hair was gross!
In college I did 'No Shave November' every year. The first year, I grew the grossest, wispiest little beard you could ever imagine, but every year since it's gotten thicker, so now I have a nice, full looking beard. That's the picture that I used for my dating profile, but I happened to shave right before going on my first date with my now girlfriend. After we'd been together for a little while, she asked, "have you ever wanted to grow out your beard again?' I was like 'oh, did you like that?' She said 'yes, you basically catfished me with a beard!' So since then I've had this.
My family finds the beard a bit odd, because a
lot of Sri Lankens don't have beards. There's a cultural thing around, that if you're bearded you're probably Muslim, and if you're clean shaven you're probably Buddhist, which I am. So these days, all the aunties are like, 'why don't you shave your beard, you'll look a lot better!' But I always say, 'well, my girlfriend likes the beard, and she's the one that has to kiss me so she gets first choice!'
I feel like in general it was weird growing up because, especially in an area with plenty of brown people, you'd expect many people with similar hair. But people would be like, 'nope, I don't think many people have curly hair like yours'. When I lived in North Carolina, I'd go to black barbershops and they'd be like, "uh, we'll try!"
With my hair it's pretty complicated. Especially with having curly hair, especially pretty dry curly hair, it's never been my favorite part of my body. Until two years ago I went to cheap hair cuts; my parents always took me to Supercuts. I'd look terrible until it grew out again, that's just how it was. But the past few years I've been getting nicer haircuts, going to people who don't treat it like straight hair. So that's good.