me & kristen stewart’s hair By Julia Kooi Talen

Danielle Henry CC



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me & kristen stewart’s hair

in the early aughts we read speak in eighth grade and then watched the film based on the book during english class to do a comparison activity. kristen stewart starred as melinda sordino and had straight brown hair and freckles like stars on the bridge of her nose. i reread the book the following weekend, twice, because blockbuster didn’t have the movie on dvd. i then asked my mother if i could dye my hair dark brown and she said no. 

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kristin stewart had long blond hair in 2007 and most weekend nights my friends and i still had sleepovers and ordered dominos pizza and watched movies featuring our celebrity crushes and sat silent during the kissing scenes. we watched in the land of women one sleepover and i told everyone i liked adam brody. when i went home the next morning i put on a black t-shirt and straightened my hair to look more like kristen stewart’s character.

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kristin stewart was back to a reddish brown in 2008 when i saw her in twilight and fell in love with the way she flipped her hair. i flipped my hair that way in trigonometry. 

that year a boy named matt liked me. his eyes were sky and his skin was silk and he held the hands of other girls in front of me and i tried to do the same, hold the hands of other girls, but my hands were brittle and i was too scared so i just ate less and read more of those vampire books.

in 2008 i also did props for the school play and sarah’s eyes were bluer than matt’s. they looked at me with a knowing i didn’t have when she touched my arm and told me which table to place the switch blade and black bible for opening night.

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kristen stewart dyed her hair dark dark brown or probably black in 2009 when another twilight movie came out. i don’t remember which, but probably went to see it with a bunch of my friends. 

that was the same year i lost my virginity. we were both virgins and didn’t really know what was happening and i thought it would be like kristen and robert’s love, electrified and pining. but it was just really painful and awkward and despite all the movies and health class we didn’t know where to put things or how to touch.

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in 2010 i remembered seeing adventureland and wondering why kristen stewart’s love interest was so much uglier than she is. in 2010 kristin stewart wore her chesnut hair tossled and pulled back a lot.

i also remember that her character in that movie went to nyu like i did. i listened to lou reed and brooded around the city smoking cigarettes still trying to flip my hair like k-stew did. one morning one girl on seventh street noticed and blew me a kiss i combed into my frizzy hair with my fingers.

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kristen stewart played joan jett in 2010 and had a mullet and after watching the runaways she appeared in my dream and twirled one of my curls with her index finger before kissing me and reaching for my hand.


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in 2011 kristen stewart still had those long, red-tinted locks and she was in another twilight movie and i went to a party over the summer and there was this girl, haley, with red lipstick. i bought red lipstick the next day and was scared to wear it around, worried it would be too loud and make too bold a statement on my pale face. 

but i wore it to the next party haley was hosting and she made eyes at another girl the whole night.

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there were times kristen’s hair was purple black in 2012. i saw her in on the road. all my queer friends came out to me that year and some of them were falling in love. i was going on dates with men ten years old than me, excited that they could take off my bra so swiftly, that they sort of knew what to do with their thumbs. 

kristen stewart’s hand were in her pockets, near her mouth, in her hair. i looked at my knuckles a lot.

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in 2013 kristen stewart’s hair was still long, although she did pull it back tight for the met ball, and that year she wasn’t in any movie.

and that year i fucked a guy with a bass clef tattooed on his back. i slept with a guy who saw ghosts out the windows of his brooklyn apartment. 
i started a new job and everyone had shiny rings on their fingers and really white teeth. 
i wore a lot of velvet and red lipstick and thick boots and kept trying to lose weight.

i cut my hair.

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in 2014 twilight was finally over and kristen stewart cut off all her hair and all of our hearts thrummed.

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once and forever came out in 2015 and kristen stewart’s hair stayed perfectly flipped all year on her head and i tried to kiss a girl at my birthday party but she said no no and i ended up chainsmoking on newton street with my vintage penny loafers trying to get this film guy to kiss me instead.

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in 2016 thank god kristen stewart bleached her hair and she was in personal shopper and i went to my first pride parade and came out to my new friend and it felt like someone had pricked me with a needle and sap poured out of my skin. i saw two butches kiss and two men with glitter on their faces blew bubbles towards the clouds.

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k-stew’s hair was buzzed and bleached and i was in love with a bisexual guy in 2017. we both had a crush on his friend, olivia. she had soft armpit hair and eyes like almonds. she hugged me well and played the guitar and i swear she looked only at me when she sung about monkeys and bumblebees and rhinoceropolis in denver.

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in 2018 i wondered a lot about what i was going to do with my life. i got an IUD and could cry for hours in the evenings and my stomach cartwheeled balloons and shards everyday that year and i went on lexipro and looked at myself in the mirror too much and everything was so slippery.

k-stew’s hair was the absolute best. shaved on the sides with a long top she styled and flipped and bleach-tipped. that year she was in JT Leroy, a film I wouldn’t hear about until later, and in it she was fucking hot.
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in 2019 i broke up with my partner and went onto the dating apps looking for anyone else to love me. kristen stewart was on the howard stern show and talked about wanting to marry her girlfriend. howard stern was annoying, no more that usual, but kristen stewart didn’t mind and she seemed more lame than i’d made her out to be. 

carrie from tinder came up to me at a party and told me we’d matched and i should have held her hand that night but i was still too scared one what that meant for me.

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in 2020 k-stew did a lot of videos with chin length, messy, half blonde-hair for that holiday movie, happiest season. i got bangs and cut off all the hair that had been held before. i moved to the middle of nowhere and all my new friends were queer and in the final days of the year i met emma in colorado and augusta in missouri.

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in 2021 kristen wore her hair in a messy pony tail and would shoot a film acting as princess diana  which would earn her an oscar nomination. that same year kristen stewart would propose to her fiance, dylan, who she talked about with howard stern.

i would fall further in love with emma. I would talk on the phone with her until midnight, we would send pictures of our pets to one another, play like kids in the kitchen while cooking past for dinner. we would see so many parts of one another we kept hidden from others.

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in 2022 i would forget about kristen’s hair, and consider buzzing mine or growing a mullet or a long shag so that everyone would know i wanted to fuck all sorts of people. i wanted to fall in various loves with everyone i knew and i never wanted to be scared of my desire. but then i realized that everything about me is already queer, like it always has been, and then it would be now, today, still and i would leave my roommate a voice text with my thumb telling them their the coolest guy i know, and my girlfriend would fuck me with a strap on during sunset, and i’d follow all my friends in the middle of nowhere on co-star forever, and i’d tattoo yarrow and goldenrod flowers onto my right arm and then and then i would also realize that it’s about the hair and it’s also not about the hair. 

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Julia Kooi Talen is a queer essayist and poet currently living in the midwest. Find more of her work at juliakooitalen.com.

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