Jonathan Van Ness

I started growing my hair out when I was, like, 22, 23. I just stopped cutting it.

As a kid growing up, I really hated being alone. I was always that kid that was like, 'Do you want to hang out? Let's go to the mall. Let's go to the movies. Let's go to the park.' I would call people and call people and call people. If I was alone when I wasn't at school, then there was something wrong.

When I moved to L.A. in my early twenties, I was growing my hair. Then, when I was 25, I cut it off and was like, 'Oh no, I think I'm a long hair person until I go bald!'

Coming from a town of 30,000 people on the Mississippi River, having 'Queer Eye' in 2003 through 2007 when I was in high school was really important.

I'm always learning new things about myself.

I've had the honor of working with so many trans people as a hairdresser over my career in some way.

I always wanted to play with people's hair. I was really into 'The Golden Girls' and how big their hair was. I always had Barbies and Ken dolls, whose hair I wanted to play with and was always styling. I was very lucky - I never had to wonder what I was passionate about. I've always known that I'm really, really passionate about grooming.

I wish I was a gorgeous mixologist, but that was not my god-given strength.

From the extreme political polarization that is everywhere - there's so much suffering going on - so many people are really thirsty to feel good about something.

In service industries, we can be so people-pleaser-y that you don't know how to set your own boundaries.

Be able to see people's humanity. I think the way that you do that and see people for more than their surface value is, say, you're reading something in the news: the gender pay gap, or gay adoption, anything that involves a group of people being marginalized.

Loneliness is, like, when you wish someone else was there, and solitude is when you enjoy being alone. I don't always wanna be alone, but I definitely like pockets of solitude to recharge and come back to myself. I think that's so important for everyone.