Our guest blogger Lauren Hoffman is a freelance writer who recently returned to Seattle from New York, after receiving an MFA in creative non-fiction. You can read more of her words in her recent feature on babble.com.
Jack Donaghy once said on an episode of 30 Rock, Your hair is your head suit. I’m inclined to agree, and not just because Alec Baldwin is welcome to come on over and call me a little pig anytime he likes. I’ve long believed in the importance of good hair, perhaps because I’ve spent a fair portion of my life with very, very bad hair. I was twenty-one before it was brought to my attention that neither a bleached-blonde crewcut nor a chin length bob with a center part and straight across bangs were the most flattering of choices for me. The overalls and enormous glasses weren’t either, but that’s all tangential to the story at hand.
At the beginning of the summer, I had a proper ponytail for the first time in my life. At the beginning of the summer, I had a proper nervous breakdown. It’s worth noting, perhaps, that this was not the fault of the ponytail.
There’s an ultimately uninteresting story in the middle, here, about doctors and ennui and collapse and waiting and really, really good psychoactive medication. But as everything was finally quieting down, I was ready for the era of greasy topknot by default to come to an end. I wanted to start doing things on purpose.
My haircut is loosely based on Anne Hathaway’s in Rachel Getting Married. The portions of the film I didn’t spend choke-crying were spent wondering whether Hathaway had to flat iron her hair to get it to look that way. I didn’t get the haircut because I emulate Hathaway’s character, Kym. Her choices were far more destructive than anything I’d ever managed, probably by the grace of my inbred Midwestern inhibition. There was certainly a level on which I identified with her, over-identified with her, even, but I mostly got the haircut because it’s just freaking fierce.
It’s tough girl hair, messy and shaggy and dark and the teensiest bit edgy, nine inches shorter and half a dozen shades darker. For the first time in my life, I feel like myself. And thanks to Aubrie and Carissa, I look like myself, too.
Is it time for you to say goodbye to an old look? To schedule with Aubrie or Carissa, give our front desk staff at call at 206.441.3441
