Bad Hair Rising

I wonder why it always comes down to hair. When women feel sad, stuck, or lost, they either shop til their personal coffers shrivel or they go to a salon to have their locks chopped.

I’m ready for change, she’d say. I’m welcoming the new me. I’m saying hi to a new life.

So, new life ergo new hairstyle?

For years, it puzzled me - this female willingness to have a go at the only thing that stands between scalp and universe. Mind you, I do the same thing, too. Not only do I turn on my hair when I get bored, I do the cutting myself and often, to disastrous consequences. I’ve lost count of the times the hub dragged me to the nearest salon for a next-day salvage mission. I know it’s a mess, he’d tell an attendant, but surely there’s something you can do?

Now, I think I have it all figured out, which is only fitting, really, because I’m the only girl I know who bores herself so much she gets a different cut and color every two months or so. Right now, it’s plum brown and a short bob with bangs; a month ago, it was chocolate brown and layered. But, I digress.

Hair is the easiest to have a go at because it’s the only part of ourselves we can snip at and hack away without losing forever. When we’re pained, we tend to dramaticize everything. Somehow, no matter how illogical it seems, chopping away a part of our anguished, frustrated selves seems liberating; it’s almost as if the simple act of getting a haircut is a salve, an easy way to cauterize a wound or soothe a dissapointment. But why hair? Well, Why not hair? You cannot lop your liver off and expect it to grow back five centimeters a month. And, perhaps, even the most jaded of us see hair as a metaphor for selfhood. When you get rid of inches of hair, you end up growing a glossier, healthier mane. The same might be said of us when we throw away excess physical or emotional baggage.

You see where I’m getting at, don’t you? Haircutting is a completely adult means of expression, perhaps even actualization. It’s symbolic of the willingness to accept change, or stand out from the rest of the huddled masses that lead lives of quiet desperation. Or then again, this post could just be me trying to rationalize that most horrible of self-inflicted horrors - a bad haircut.

Hello, Wednesday.