I forgot how to type. Standing away from the internet these past two days have proven rather challenging but like most things that are hard, taught valuable lessons. On a more marginal note, I learned that the circumstances of our generations “short attention spans” are actually just a testament to the effects of compulsive mobile device checking. We can concentrate, I felt it with my own brain. More important though, the internet is like a really sexy abusive boyfriend. No matter how badly we know we’ve got to get away from it–even if for a little, we just can’t live without it (him.)
That sage advice aside, let’s talk hair.
Image via BFA. Aurelie Bidermann, Jennifer Fisher, Mark Henry rings and bracelets. Vena Cava dress.
And camera lenses. But mostly hair. This is perhaps not the right photo to dive into this topic but it’s horizontal and romantic and you’ve seen my hair enough times to know what it looks like (intentionally frizzy, shoulder length.)
I went for a haircut toward the end of August and anticipated that whatever direction I gave to the stylist would get lost in either his French accent or my poor description skills.
“Cool looking with as little maintenance as possible,” I said as I rubbed my scalp and shook my head from side to side.
Diego, the hairdresser and stylist at Roy Teeluck salon, laughed.
“Short and messy,” I told him
“Like the French,” he complied. At last, he agreed and started to snip.
I started to panic while he was chopping. Feeling the hair come off my head and subsequently watching it fall to the ground gave me the shakes. I didn’t know why. It certainly wasn’t my first haircut (I’ve been known to snip up to 5 inches in the comfort of my own bathroom.) It was then that I realized women are…funny.
It seems like our hair is one collective security blanket, something we can use as a mask to hide behind and play with during uncomfortable situations. Whether or not we want it, we use it and grow attached to it. Which I suppose does make sense–it does after all grow and remain attached to us. I thought about women with pixie cuts and respected their self-reliance.
One hairdresser once told me, “the difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut is two weeks,” but is that really enough time to grow your blanket back? Likely not. Here are women who have abandoned that and dismantled the ability to lean back on head heavy external details for a couple of months, at least. I longed to be one of them.
Meanwhile in real time, when all was said and cut, I was content. Abby, the colorist, glazed a few strategic patches of hair (the natural highlights behind my ears are actually not natural at all,) and my hair looked precisely how I’d pictured it in my head. (I couldn’t resist that pun.) I’d wash it, spray some Surf Spray into it post-shower, let it air dry and look like Alexa Chung (if she had a uni-brow and zygote feet.)
I couldn’t help wonder though if my decision to chop to shoulder was only a means to preserve a sliver of my security blanket. I’ve never pixied, how would I feel? Miserable? Powerful? An unusual marriage of both? This begs the question: how far should one go for the sake of a social experiment?
Shall I balls to the walls and cut my mane to androgynous heights?
