For most of my life, I’ve had very long hair. There was a brief moment when I was seven years old where I cut it short, though it was long ago, I can still remember the comments from classmates telling me I looked like a boy and relatives suggesting to my mother I grow it out again. Ever since then, I’ve never cut it short again, believing wholeheartedly that the moment I didn‘t have long hair, I would no longer be pretty.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
I know it sounds silly, and that’s because it is. It’s ridiculous that the length of a woman’s hair can be so indicative of how beautiful they are. I know that some may claim there are exceptions to this rule, but generally all the women I see who have made short hair “beautiful” have otherwise conventionally attractive bodies and faces, and so thus this single deviation from the norm of flowing locks is seen as acceptable.
For someone like me, with my generally average face and body, my long hair was one of the few conventionally attractive things I had going for me.
However, my hair often gets in the way when I’m working or exercising, it is always knotted, and I’m also clueless about styling. So generally it hangs limp and straight around my face. I began thinking I should take off a few inches, and then I thought maybe I should cut off about half its’ length. I even began flirting with the idea of a “lob,” a hairstyle I love but thought could never suit me.
I made an appointment with a salon, still feeling comfortable in the fact that I had a few weeks to decide what I was going to do – since, in the end, I could still simply ask for a simple trim once I got there. I remembered all the times it has been insinuated to me that if I were to cut my hair, I would no longer be desirable. Almost every guy I’ve ever dated had told me they like girls with long hair. Once even, after I joked about cutting it off, one of them implied that he would no longer be interested in dating me.
So yes, maybe it sounds ridiculous that the length of my hair is such an important issue for me, but I don’t necessarily think I’m the one who decided that.
At the salon, I told the stylist I wanted to cut my hair shorter. He asked what length and I tentatively put my hand a little beneath my shoulders to demonstrate. Then, he simply started snipping. I felt like maybe we should have done a prayer circle first or something – but the way he cut off all of my hair was so unceremonious that it took a little of the weight off.
He then disappeared to mix dye for my hair, and I stared at my new short-haired self in the mirror. Was I suddenly ugly? Unfeminine? Had I lost a few points on the attractiveness scale? I wasn’t sure. I looked behind me at all of my hair on the floor. I wanted to feel triumphant, free of the limitations of gender constructs and beauty ideals, but instead, I couldn’t help but feel a little wistful, and a sharp bolt of regret ran through me. Did I just cut off the only thing I had that made me pretty?
After it was over, and my hair was now balayage blonde, framing my face and ending at my shoulders, I really couldn’t decide how I felt. My friends insisted it was cute, and asked me if I liked it, but I could only respond that I thought it was just okay. I explained to them that I felt less sexy, somehow, or maybe just less in general.
As the days I went on, it wasn’t as though I suddenly fell in love with my new hairstyle, but I began feeling more comfortable. I liked the ease with which I could style it, how I no longer had to painfully brush out knots several times a day and was having fun trying something new. My hair became a part of me, rather than a part of how others viewed me. I began to separate myself from the beauty ideal I couldn’t help but strive for.
Though I’ll probably never be completed excluded from it, cutting off my long hair was a small step in me telling myself that maybe I don’t need to have a certain length of hair in order to feel pretty.
Featured image via kaleido-dp on Pixabay
