Jolene Mifsud's hairstyles have been ever-changing.
"I've had multiple, multiple hairdos throughout my existence. Like little cat ears, little racing stripes, mullets — you name it, I've had it all," the non-binary Canberran says.
As Jolene's hair evolved, so did their identity.
Growing up in the 1980s, Jolene didn't really see themselves reflected in everyday life.
"When I was a kid, I always leaned more towards masculine things — clothing, toys, and hanging with the boys.
"My dad was my best mate. We used to hang out together, I'd go on truck trips with him."
Jolene began identifying as a lesbian at 19, but years passed before they had another significant realisation about their identity.
Whilst performing in what they described as "punk cabarets", Jolene began to play around with their gender, dressing in drag.
But it wasn't until a friend began referring to them using gender-neutral pronouns that things fell into place.
"A friend started using they/them pronouns for me because she thought that I was already doing that.
"It just felt right. I've never felt like I fit into being a girl or a boy or those two binaries, I've always just felt out of that felt very myself."
Jolene's hairstyles are intricately connected with that journey.
They were born to Maltese parents who strongly associated hairstyle with gender.
"When I was four, my hair was already down past my hips.
"Mum would always do our hair. Me and my sister, our hair was very nice.
"And then when I got to I think about year six … I couldn't do my own hair and I felt embarrassed to tell my friends, so I wanted it all cut off."
Jolene got an undercut around the time they first came out, describing it as their "first wild thing".
"The next step was to shave it all off. And I remember that day. My best friend was like, 'let's go, we're gonna go do this right now because you won't do it.
"So we went and shaved all my hair off, and I just had nothing to hide behind. And it was liberating. It was freedom."
The hair has continued to evolve, being grown back and shaved off several times since to suit different phases of Jolene's life.
Jolene says they were lucky to find Sam Dowdall, their non-binary barber.
'They just walk with a pride of self'
Sam entered the hair industry at 15 years old.
"I wanted a job where I could talk shit, and I didn't have to lift anything heavy, and hairdressing was perfect for that," Sam says.
Now eighteen years into their career, Sam's work has taken on new meaning.
"Touching people's hair and their face is a very, very interpersonal place. It's a place with a lot of trust, and a lot of vulnerability as well," Sam says.
"And so when you break into that vulnerability, you're standing over top of somebody, you're changing their appearance, you come very close with people that way."
Sam wants their mobile barbershop to be a safe space for people who are exploring their own identities.
"If I help anybody find anything, I think that maybe we uncover things that they already know — it's inside them.
"It's kind of like they come in with this identity that they want to portray, and we can do that together.
"And it can be an incredibly liberating thing — a lot of that is coming down to untying ourselves to expectations we feel that others have of us and owning that space."
Being non-binary themselves, Sam is acutely aware that some haircuts can hold a lot more power than a regular snip and chop.
"Especially for people that have come in that have been really heavily femme presenting for a long time, and we do that big cut off … those ones can be the biggest transformation that we get to see in front of you.
"And my favourite part about that is watching people's shoulders go back, their head come up, and they just walk with a pride of self."
'I've cried with Sam before'
Jolene says finding Sam was "very special".
"As someone with a femme body and going into a barber that predominantly deals with men, you have to find the right person that's going to want to cut your hair that's going to make you feel like it's OK to have your hair short and shaved and not to be judged.
"You will also walk along and see commercial hairdressers and stuff and you've got different prices for different genders. And it's like well, my hair's really short. Which one am I going to fit into the category of?" Jolene says.
"I've cried with [Sam] before, like it's just healing. You feel safe and you can get the hairdo that you want, and this person you can trust to be in this intimate space with."
Sam says they want people who leave their barbershop to "feel heard".
"But also, I want them to feel like a bit of a rock star. I want somebody to walk out of here being like, I'm important, you know, my story was important," they said.
"We tell ourselves stories about our worth and our looks and appearance all the time. But to be able to modify that story is a really, really important thing."
