In the morning, Laila Pho ’27 gathers her hair from the floor before she gathers herself. It takes two hands. Sometimes three tries. By the time she leaves the house, it is already the first thing people notice.

“It’s always my hair that gets brought up first,” Pho said. “Not really anything else. When others describe me, they always refer to me as the girl with long hair. It’s like my hair comes before everything.”

For a long time, Pho didn’t question it. The compliments came easily. So did the stares. But in elementary school, the attention began to shift. Classmates whispered. Strangers asked questions. Teachers commented before learning her name. 

“Elementary school is when I realized my hair wasn’t just hair—it was different. I stood out because of it. Not everyone had hair like mine,” Pho said. “It was my whole personality, the thing people saw first.”

Classmates and strangers sometimes made assumptions about her. Her hair told its own story, and sometimes people read it wrong.

“Some kids would ask if I was a hippie, others asked if it was part of my religion, [and] some even asked if I washed my hair in a braid,” Pho said. “I wasn’t in that mental state yet where I realized it was different. I thought I was just a normal girl with long hair.”

There were moments Pho almost decided to cut her hair. Even with all the love and attention, the temptation of standard societal norms lingered.

“I thought about cutting my hair many times, but the time I wanted to cut it the most was when I was in middle school. Everyone around me had shorter hair,” Pho said. “I felt like I wasn’t fitting into standard norms, [and] I wanted to be like everyone else.”

Her hair has grown up with her, and her mom has seen it all. Cutting it would mean letting go of all of the history it holds. 

“My mom has always loved my hair,” Pho said. “She’s seen it grow since I was little—every stage of my life, every braid, every ponytail. My hair holds memories we share, [and] that’s why letting it go is so hard.”

For Pho, her hair isn’t just hair. It’s a lifetime of memories, stories, and attention that follows her everywhere.

“My hair is like its own person, but it’s not. I have a deep attachment to it. It holds all my memories, and has seen me grow through every stage of my life,” she said.

When Pho visited Mexico, the attention felt different.

“An older woman once stopped me in Mexico. She had long gray hair too,” she said. “Before touching my hair, she told me, ‘your hair is very beautiful, but the memories and stories it holds are even more beautiful.'”

People notice Pho’s hair more than she wants. The attention can feel overwhelming, and the admiration comes too close.

“Sometimes people just come up and touch my hair,” Pho said. “They acknowledge my hair, but they don’t acknowledge how I feel. It makes me wonder how people would feel if others randomly started touching their hair.”

Even so, the though of cutting her hair feels impossible. Her hair has grown with her, and with it, a part of who she is. The choice to cut her hair feels too heavy to make, even if she wanted to. At the end of the day, its not only her hair—it’s also her identity.

“I feel like I’d erase my identity,” Pho said. “People know me as the girl with long hair. That’s the first thing they see. If I walked into a room without it, I don’t know if people’s heads would turn.”

At Rotary Youth Leadership Award, a program that challenges more than 80 students to participate in outdoor activities that develop team building, problem-solving, and communication, everyone gathered under a big tree and started interacting with one another. That was the only time when Pho’s hair wasn’t the first thing anyone brought up when starting a conversation. 

“When I was at RYLA, people didn’t use my hair as a conversation starter, they actually talked to me. They asked what I liked to do for fun. They acknowledged who I was first, [and] they only complimented my hair after they got to know me,” Pho said

For the first time in years, her hair did not arrive first. She did.