Rayna will never have a haircut.

I am not typically your run of the mill girly girl. I had to work on the personality because the looks were very slow coming growing up.  My mother thought it would be a good idea when I was four years old, to cut all my hair off and keep it that way until I had a nervous breakdown. My hair is thick. It is as thick as a piece of rope that they use for the indoor jungle gyms that they use in elementary school gym class. If you keep that kind of hair short, it naturally assumes a troll dolll-variety style and there is absolutely no styling that can be done. It rejects products like mousse or gel. Burden a small child with that haircut before she even starts school is devestating. My mother feels bad, I know this, but she probably won't admit it.

I wasn't even given a chance. On my first day of school I was ostracized by one girl because I looked funny and it filtered down to all the other girls. Thank god I had the other Andrea. She was my one friend through it all. Eventually more came around but it was tough.

Then I was asked on a weekly basis (at the very least) if I was a boy or a girl. Did the dress not tip you off, kid? Eventually I just gave up and assumed the role of tomboy and that was that. I played with He-Man as well as She-Ra, I collected Ninja Turtles, and I played fort games with the boys. But imagine how that fared once I discovered that I had a crush on a boy. Would he want to be the boyfriend of a girl who looked like a boy? Unless he was coming to terms with his own sexuality-probably not- but I digress. I was an ugly duckling and even the grow-out stage of my hair was brutal. I noticed the other girls in my class would get these amazing perms and voila! their hair grew even longer. I figured the secret to growing long hair was to get a perm. My mom shelled out the fifty bucks for this and when they took all the curlers out, instead of luxuriously long tresses magically appearing, Debbie Gibson eat your heart out- I was staring at Joanie from the later episodes of Happy Days...or David Hasselhoff in Night Rider if you want to be a dick about it. Awkward.

I was envious of long hair for literally all of my elementary school years. It really shaped who I was. I had to work extra hard at getting attention in different areas so kids wouldn't focus on how weird I looked. I would blurt out the stupidest things (that hasn't changed) in an effort to divert attention from the fact that I looked like Jonathan Brandis' younger brother. It didn't help that I had an older brother who got off on tormenting me and calling me Tina Turner because I had "biiiiig hair". I even found myself feeling strange for wearing a dress...like I would "out" myself of being female.

Anyway eventually I grew that shit out into one length. Once I achieved that, I grew it until it hung down to my ass. I think I had a point...I had a point...the point is that I can usually tell if someone was pretty when they were in their formative years. Usually if they are bubbly and just the right amount of dumb, I can envision a pretty little girl with hair as long as Rapunzel. When I meet a jaded, cynical yet intelligent individual I have to stop myself from asking if they went through the ugly duckling phase too.