The Hair Debate

 

Weston, Mass- If you think Irish dancers today are “artificial, oddly-sexualized mannequin versions of themselves” like Fionola Meredith from the Belfast Telegraph. Think again. Irish dancers are starting to shed their fake curls, adorning long straight hair, side buns, elegant swoops, lovely French twists, and fashion-forward wedding-like hairdos. No wigs. I love it. The natural hair trend is a small but growing movement amongst competing Irish dancers that I more than support; I envy.

 

I love the idea of using our own hair to accentuate our dancing on stage, and so do outsiders to the world of Irish dancing. Wigs and curls are not a part of who I am as a dancer. They do not show the strength and grace that comes with practicing two hours a day on a minute’s performance, nor do I think they will. This natural hair trend reflects many recent changes occurring in the Irish dancing world, retaliating criticism like Fionola’s that Irish Dancing has now become a pageant. To an uneducated eye, maybe. However, I love embracing my Irish culture as a part of who I am, and that means accepting everything that goes with the territory. Up until recently, this also meant accepting the curly fake hair. With this movement, Irish dancing is not just encouraging dancers’ natural talent but their natural beauty as well.

 

Curly hair has been a part of an Irish dancer’s cultural identity: our hallmark card. But times have changed and so has Irish dancing. Not long ago, I remember dragging my feet to church, burying my face in the nape of my father’s body to conceal the 70 little curlers replacing my long, soft brown hair. Wigs were not an option, and neither was curly hair. Back then I often prayed for a magic genie to grant me the curly hair I needed. When I realized this wouldn’t happen, I wondered why I could not use my own straight silky hair, and tie it up with a ribbon or brush it into a bun with a tiara like Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

 

Curls are gratefully an option now. No one will ever have to understand the awful process of my mother pulling my hair into the curlers, or back behind the combs of a wig, spraying large amounts of putrid hair spray. A weight can literally be lifted off our shoulders. No wigs. No 50 bobby pins pinning against our head. No sleepless nights of curlers pressing into the pores of our scalps. No anxiety of running out of bobby pins at the 11th hour. No wigs falling off your head on stage, and no headaches caused by their wrath.

 

I’m a straight-haired dancer: an Irish descendant who loves her family’s culture wrought with life lessons in it’s dancing. I have grown to be comfortable in my skin because of Irish dancing, and I can’t wait to see how this trend develops to better reflect this side of Irish dancing. But if we still look like pageant queens in your eyes, forgive us, but we are the queens of the stage, working far too hard to reign over the competition, representing not just our sport but also our culture, passion, and ourselves. Wigs will be long gone; they not a part of us, the dance is.