Throughout my younger years, however ill-advised, I was a frontline advocate for the bob and bangs look.
When I was a kid, my identity was largely inseparable from my bob. I never thought of my hair as explicitly long, even in the years when it did fall past my shoulders. And, honestly, I rocked it. Three separate friends have told me in the years since that, as kids, they had been inspired by my very own blocky, Dora the Explorer cut. Two out of those three people, however, also told me they immediately regretted their choice after the clippings grazed the floor.
And that’s the thing about haircuts, isn’t it? You always want more change, until you don’t. Midnight bangs and misadventures in home-dyeing come with an immediate, terrifying grief. You want to make a choice to prove to yourself that you can make an immediate change to your appearance and still be yourself after the clippings fall. But when you face the mirror, the long hair no longer seems like it was a weighted burden, but something you carried with you. Something that bore witness. Something you chose to discard.
I never regretted cutting my hair as a kid. I grew up largely unconcerned with the opinions of people around me, and I was all the better for it. I did whatever I wanted, just to do it. I had dyed my hair an almost nonstop barrage of colors starting in fifth grade — bobs and bangs before that. I even let my middle school boyfriend pick the color once. It’s liberating to dye your hair or change it as you please. When the hair brushing my shoulders began to lay on them instead, or its color drifted a little too close to a neutral blonde, I knew it was time to chop, dye or do something different. My hair was suspended, prickling my shoulders, too short to fully settle. It was a controlled abandon, an external portrayal of chaos, selected by me.
My hair has been largely the same since I decided to stop dyeing it in high school. But now, a summer stretches ahead of me with no real commitments or people to impress. I’m starting to get an itch. Do it. Cut bangs, or a bob. Dye it blue. Bleach your roots. I’ve even considered shaving it. (Is it wrong to want to be intimately familiar with my head shape?)
Last October, when I box-dyed my hair blue for a Halloween costume alone in my parents’ bathroom, I found myself with the grief I had somehow avoided for most of my life. I cried a little, petting the tampered locks and not recognizing the person looking back at me. It felt like someone else had brushed the dye over my hair. I was beyond myself, shocked and horrified that I cared so much. My brain knew that it made no difference, it knew that the dye would fade, but there was an icky part of me that suddenly cared about my appearance — a lot. I had lost my cool. I had lost the uncaring attitude that had fueled my — frankly terrible — hair styling as an adolescent.
There’s a point to be made about feminine identity being inextricably tied to both the length and quality of women’s hair. And sure enough, only when the dye washed out a couple weeks later, and my brown hair returned, did I feel like myself again. Either the years of plain, brown hair developed into my default, or the unthinkable had happened: I had become emotionally entangled with social expectations and their strict guidelines for not only my hair, but also my identity.
It felt like a failing. Gender norms: one; me: zero.
Somehow, the airy brown wisps, visible out of the corner of my eye, found their way into my perception of myself. I woke up, and one day, I suddenly cared whether this mass on my head lived or died. The middle school feminist in me — perhaps the driving force behind my persistence in refusing naturally-colored hair from ages 10 to 13 — would have been disappointed.
I’ve always thought I was one of those people who genuinely, really, did not care about superficial things like my hair. Prided myself on it, even. Now, discovering that I might just be, you know, a person who cares about things, it might be more important than ever to retain the simple brown. To allow the flimsy demands of my gender to dictate what I do with my hair, whether that results in conforming to or rejecting norms, is helping no one. And honestly, I love the feeling of long hair against my bare back, uncovered by a sweatshirt or coat. I love the practical gift that my current — I still hesitate here — long-ish hair brings in its ability to be pulled back, allowing me to avoid fiddling with face framing or blinking bangs away from my lashes.
So, when the itch of the long and empty summer months calls me to make a change — if I succumb to my basest instincts and go through with it — I know the instant regret and the weepy mirror sessions that will lie across that bridge. At least this time around, I have a home base to return to. I know that my plain brown hair waits for me on the other side.
Unless …
Daily Arts Writer Cora Rolfes can be reached at corolfes@umich.edu.
