I have had short hair, like Pixie short, since I was five. I have had gamine cuts (think Halle Berry in 007) and mushroom cuts (think Dorothy Hamill). I have had perms and streaks; dyed it red and worse yet, platinum. I have 'grown it long' only once, in the early nineties. I grew it out to please my then long-term boyfriend (now long-gone boyfriend). Like many people, men and women alike, he believed all women should have long hair. I was overweight and unhappy with myself. I wanted to be desired. Long hair is sex-kittenish. Long hair is for bombshells. Long hair represents the beautiful people. So, I began the ugly fight and started to grow it out.
Once I survived the initial horrid shaggy-do with no style and my hair got long enough, I got a bad perm. (Is there a good perm
I wore it pinned up with combs (anyone my age or older knows what those are) or a banana clip everyday. Mmm, foxy. Ladies, there is nothing foxy about a banana clip, unless you have on a Jane Fonda bodysuit and legwarmers to go with it. Occasionally I pulled back the front half into a Jack Nicholson mini Sumo-wrestler pony-tail. Picture it.... sweet.And so the cycle has gone. Grow a little, chop it off. Grow a lot, chop it off. I do this routinely.
Like the hair sucker I am, I maintain a cycle. I will decide to grow out my normally short and style-less hair. Then I fight with it for six months. Every morning I push it into all sorts of positions to accommodate that transition from over the ears to almost at the chin. Six months of cursing at the curling iron, trying to find and buy the one brand of mousse or gel or pomade that will work a miracle on my fine, limp, straight-as-a-pin hair. Then it begins. A seething, uncontrollable urge to rip my hair out at the roots when it doesn't lay the way I want it to. Soon I am pasting it back off my face with a headband. Mmm, foxy. Shows off the Robert DeNiro mole on my forehead beautifully.
Why do I torture myself? I have spent upward of 40 minutes on my hair in the morning. Did I mention I have four kids in my house? That I have a full time job to get to? I have breakfasts to make and kisses to dole out. Nothing puts me in a crankier mood than messing around with my hair for forty plus minutes in the morning only to have it do whatever it wants anyways. (Except for changing my clothes four times because I am having a 'fat day'.) And so my hatred for long-ish hair percolates within me like hot coffee in an old urn.
Finally one morning, I snap. In a fit of wild fury I wield my scissors like a weed-whacker and begin to assault my chocolate locks. I come at it from the left, then the right. The left, the right, the left, the left some more. Then I sit on the sink and open the medicine cabinet door and work backwards, running my hair between my fingers and snip-snip-snipping away. As the sink fills with hair, my anger dissipates. Soon I am trimming up the edges and neatening the last remaining stragglers. Yes, for those of you that gasped; I cut my own hair. Yes, I am aware that this is dangerous. What can I say? I march to my own beat. I do it all the time, and have for years.
I carefully lay the scissors down and smile. There I am. Cutting off the longer pieces is always a bitter-sweet reunion for me. I am disappointed with myself for ruining my 'beauty' and delighted that I am reuniting with a friend I haven't seen for six months. The newly short and crisp cut is the 'me' I know and love.
I have yet to figure out exactly why I do this to myself. This 'grow, cut, grow, cut' thing.
Since I was a teenager and then a young woman, it has been perfectly obvious to me that the feminine mystique is draped in satiny, luscious, curly, sexy locks of raven, brunette, auburn and blonde. Ask any nine year old girl what a pretty woman looks like. She will tell you she has at least two of these things: Long hair, pretty fingernails, red or pink lipstick, big boobs, is skinny and wears high heeled shoes.
The belief that women are only truly beautiful with long hair is one of many beauty myths that are sold to us from a tender age at an enormous cost. They rob us of our energy, our value, our self-esteem and our 'realness'. I have wasted a tremendous amount of time and energy trying to change my outer self and beating up my inner-self in the process. Each morning that I stand in the mirror and force myself to measure up to the one standard of beauty that I haven’t been able to achieve, I label myself a beauty failure.
At the risk of sounding like SNL's Phil Hartman character, Stuart Smalley ('I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and doggone it, people like me.'); I am perfect just the way I am. I met a handsome and talented man about ten years ago who thinks I am beautiful in every way. He met me with short hair, fell in love with me with short hair and married me with short hair. He has also watched me fight with it, grow it out and pin it back, only to chop it all off, over and over and over again. He has no problem with my hair. Apparently only I do. (Oh, there’s a shocker.)
The thing is I actually love my hair when it is short. I refer to it as my ‘power’ cut. I feel strong and bright and unique when I wear it. In a world of trendy cuts; long and sleek, wild and curly, smart looking lengths; my clipped cut sets me apart. Not many woman aim for short, style-less hair. Maybe I just get bored with my short hair and need a change from time to time.
While boredom is likely (who wants the same hairdo for thirty-two years
it is equally possible that I am simply aiming for a vision that I will never allow myself to be. When I begin growing out my hair, it doesn’t take long before I feel like somebody else. I cannot lie to you though, if I could blink my eyes and have hair like Jennifer Lopez in an instant, I would. But one day, I’d wake up and be too bloody tired (between career, family and housework) to mold, shape and tease one more tendril. I’d start by sticking it in a pony tail, then put it in a braid, and before you know it, I’d be wearing a dollar-store headband to keep it out of my eyes.
Then, out of the bathroom drawer would come the scissors. A little off the left, the right. The left, the right, the right some more. After a while, I’d lay the scissors down. There I am. Hello, beautiful.