My piece engages with the theme of hair by connecting it to relationships with different family members. I explore on the one side, fetishization from my mother's White adoptive family, and on the other side internalised texturism from my aunt on my father's Latinx side. I receive push back from both sides of the family for defying gender and beauty standards by choosing to wear my hair short. Despite the troubled nature of my family's perception of my hair, we still seek a sense of belonging and continuity, symbolised through the act of braiding hair.

The piece engages with race, migration, and belonging by telling my mother's adoption story and references her and her family's straddling of the US and South Korea. The way my mother's adoptive family perceives our race is interesting both in that it idealizes our Asian features but also White-washes my mother's Korean heritage. The piece also wonders how much success at conforming to an exotic, yet White-adjacent idea of beauty was a factor of my mother belonging to this family.

The piece also touches on themes of gender and queerness through its discomfort with the idea of beauty. It presents beauty as a form of control of one's gender presentation and sexuality, but also redefines beauty through the scream as an expression of grief.