Independence day.
Friday, July 4th, 2008
I’m not sure what day it was exactly when I cut all my hair off. I do remember this: it was eight years ago and I had just quit a job that everyone thought I was crazy to leave. But sometimes you need to do what’s right, even if it means you won’t be in the cool job, the fun job, and in my case one that was very much the former but not at all the latter. You know the old saying- who cares if you get to stamp Eddie Vedder’s wrist if you’re not happy.
I walked out of the place that day and headed towards downtown. I’m going to admit right now that I didn’t go to VAIN. It was still early on for me as a VAIN client and besides, I didn’t even know that I was going to get my hair cut until I walked up to the other salon.
When I walked out an hour later my shoulder length hair was gone. And I mean gone. I did have that little duck tail spikey action in the back that was big then (but that I knew, always in my heart and the minute I saw it on my head, was really just a mullet. No amount of Bumble and Bumble’s going to change that), but otherwise gone. Super short. “Wow what did you do” short. “Boy” short.
The haircut didn’t look that good on me. I’d love to report otherwise, but there were no two ways around it- it just didn’t look right. I don’t think I got a single compliment on it as I painstakingly grew it back out over what seemed like the next ten thousand years. Just a lot of “look at yoooouuuu”s. If you’ve had a similar experience then you know what I mean. But looking back, I can call it the best haircut I’ve ever had. It was an exercise in self-conciousness, made me think about my own gender perceptions when it came to hair, and most of all it was a symbol, or probably the symbol, of my independence from a lousy situation that I was afraid to leave because of how it might look. Hair’s not so different from life sometimes. Sometimes you just have to take it all off.
-Rebecca P.
