There were really only two options to achieve the desired results: get braids or cut it all off. I chose the latter.

A friend drove me to a salon near campus where the right side was for women, and the left for men. I walked to the left and sat in the barber's chair, and he asked how much of my "nice" hair he'd be disposing of. My heart was pounding, but without missing a beat, I replied, "About the same length as yours, please." After a bit of eye-rolling and head-shaking, he took out his clippers, and I was transformed. I ran my hands over my 1-inch crop and thought, "Who is that girl in the mirror?!" Seeing yourself with virtually no hair is a shock, but even more so when it's hair you haven't actually seen or touched in its natural state for nearly a decade.

Later that evening, I took my new hair to the dining hall, greeting friends as if nothing about me had changed. I didn't really know how to talk about the obvious, but they didn't let me off the hook. Me: "Yes! They have turtle cheesecake tonight!" Friend: "Um, your hair is gone — and I love it!" Me: "Oh yeah, you noticed?" Friend: (Rolling eyes) "Of course I did, crazy."

The haircut was a hit with friends and faculty alike, and my boyfriend at the time (who happened to be white) loved it, too. I had nothing to worry about, right?

Wrong. But I wouldn't know how wrong until I went home for spring break a few weeks later.

My parents knew nothing of the Big Cut, and in my infinite wisdom, I decided to keep them out of the loop until the last minute. As in, when I stepped off the plane.

There was my mother (who I'm very close to) at the bottom of the escalator, smiling, then squinting, then frowning, then (oh, no) gaping. She'd noticed.

"Hi, Mom!" (Reaching for a hug.) "It's so much warmer here!"

Silence.

"Um, my bags should be coming out any minute now!" (Sounding overly chipper with a hint of desperation.)

She finally speaks: "Your … hair … what … happened? What … did … you …"

"Do you like it?"

"What … did … "

"I decided it was time to reclaim my roots and go back to my natural state. The African Diaspora deserves this hair — plus, everyone at school just loves it!"

"Your … h-h-h-hair … "

"Mom, it's just hair — it'll grow back. Where should we get lunch?"

"Hair … happened?"

Little did I know, those were some of the last words my mother would speak over the next 24 hours. My hair and I had literally rendered her speechless.

She was still talking (sort of), but not directly to me. She asked questions through my father ("Does she want butter on her roll?") and talked about why she couldn't deal with my "kinky, too-short Afro" right in front of me. "She looks like a boy," she wailed to my grandmother on the phone. "With nappy hair!"

Looking back on it, the high drama in our house that day was hilarious, but at the time, it was no laughing matter. I was hurt and offended that she considered my naturally coarse hair inferior to her relaxed Michelle Obama-esque 'do.

Didn't she know that straightening your hair was just as bad as bleaching your skin? Black is beautiful, in so many ways, and here she was shutting down one of the things that made us us.

When she did lift the wall of silence, there was still a sea between us, as I caught her just staring at my hair while we talked and repeatedly starting sentences with, "Well, when your hair grows back … "

The rest of that week was pretty tense. When I came home for the summer, she had eased up a bit but still wasn't willing to say she liked my hair, even though everyone around us was saying just that. "They're just being nice," she explained. Ouch.

By senior year, I'd grown my hair out to a respectable 8 inches or so and began to get it straightened with a hot comb every so often. The length, combined with a feverish final school year, led to the lower-maintenance, straightened style, but the point was that I could return to my natural state with one simple shampooing whenever I pleased.

When I began to get it straightened more regularly, my mother was thrilled that my hair was back to "normal." And if memory serves me correctly, she may have even made a remark to the effect that an Afro had the potential to sully otherwise respectable graduation photos.

The high drama hadn't gone anywhere.

In the seven years following the Big Cut, I've learned a lot about racism, self-loathing, faulty perceptions of beauty and myself through my hair. To be clear, I have no interest in indicting women who use relaxers, wear weaves or have never touched their real hair, because as some of the women in Good Hair say, it's about what makes you happy.

To that end, what makes me happy is having the option to look like Michelle Obama one day and Jill Scott the next. I get to choose, and it would be great if other women could see the beauty in that choice as well. And, yes, that includes my mother, too.

Enlarge By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY Thompson: Hair today ...