Hair. Where do I begin?
It's amazing to me how much our (my) identity is wrapped up in our (my) hair. Seriously. Probably less so for men, though I did know a heartbreaker of a guy once whose sex appeal was largely tied to his wild, curly hair. Grace and I use to joke that he was like Samson and would talk about secretly cutting it off in the middle of the night much like Delilah did. Let's see how much action he'd get then.
I've known a few people, Lenny Kravitz not among them, who've had dreadlocks for years and finally cut them off. Years of energy caught up in their hair hanging off their heads, and when they cut them off, they'll often talk about how alive and liberated they feel. It's almost like a rite of passage. A letting go of the past. And I can relate. Each time I get a haircut, I feel lighter and more alive.
It's on my mind at the moment because I'm feeling a desperate need to be shorn. By general western cultural standards (for some reason the term "generally accepted accounting principles" oddly keeps coming to mind), I've got good hair for a white chick - thick, shiny, soft - the kind of hair that people always enviously say they wish they had. I go through these periods where I decide to grow it out - to have that kind of hair you see most often worn by daytime soap opera actors, a signature of femininity and beauty. So after a few years of wearing it somewhat short, it hangs past my shoulders now. And you'd think that when it got long like it is now, I'd be rock 'em sock 'em. Not so - at least not to me.
Instead I feel weighed down, gross, and even moody - a sure sign to me that it's time to shed the locks. So does my dire need for a haircut justify a whole blog post dedicated to my hair? Probably not, but my hair fixation today reminded me of a story that leads me back to my original statement about how much of our (my) identity is wrapped up in our (my) hair.
When I was about 21, there was a period of time when I thought I may have a nasty form of cancer. It was a very troubling time for me - multiple biopsies and doctor visits and MRIs and such to figure out if the massive tumor in my leg was going to kill me. The good news is that it didn't kill me nor was it cancer. The bad news is that the back of my left thigh is permanently and significantly disfigured from an intensive surgery and reconstructive process. A tattoo couldn't even make this bitch of a scar pretty. I even walked with a cane for several months (which coincidentally made me feel completely badass). Oh well. Glad it wasn't my face.
So what does this story have to do with my hair you may wonder? When I got the call explaining the results of the MRI, a split second panic had me dropping the phone and fearing that I was going to lose my leg. When I calmed down enough to find out that they weren't going to cut off my leg, the next thought that ran through my head - I shit you not - was that I wanted to cut off my hair. Ridiculous maybe, but true. I couldn't imagine thinking about taking care of my long mane while having cancer, going through chemotherapy, being laid up in a hospital bed flat on my stomach for six weeks post-op, and then the months of recovery and attention that my leg would require.
So I directly went to my hair lady and had it chopped off - pixie-style. It was cute, sort of, but the problem was that it had the opposite of the desired effect. Instead of not thinking about my hair, I thought about it constantly. Of course, this was after I turned out to not have cancer, but nonetheless, I was more conscious and spent more time on my hair than ever before. Coincidentally, it even impacted other parts of my appearance. I often go without makeup, but when my hair was short, I wore more makeup more frequently. I was more thoughtful about wearing skirts, not wanting to look butch. And it annoyed the shit out of me that I was so vain that I cared enough to put more time and energy into any of this stuff. Instead of the standard 30 minutes it takes for me to get ready - including a shower - I was dedicating an entire hour to the daily beautification process.
The bottom line is, I was out of my hair comfort zone. Yep. That's right. I've got a hair comfort zone, and it falls right in between not too long and not too short. I get how ridiculously girly and shallow this all sounds, but actually, it's the exact opposite. When I'm in my hair comfort zone, I feel more myself and try less to project a certain type of appearance that I think I am supposed to have. And on hair-obsessed days like today, it keeps me from doing something radical and impulsive like shaving the shit off. Because then I really would become obnoxiously girly and vain, and that's just not me.
~ the lady coiffed
3 comments:
Oh my, you do like to write. If I had only had such confidence in my words back then, I wouldn't have waited until my 50s to declare myself a poet. Yes, Miss Lady Love, this is envy you detect.
I wonder, sometimes, how our species would have evolved if mirrors were not invented?
'Hair? What do you mean? Who cares?'
Ah, yes, if only it weren't possible to be vain. 'Zit? What do you mean? Who cares?' Of course, we'd still have water to admire/abhor our own appearances. And without a reflection, there'd still be a standard of beauty since the people looking at us still have vision. Now you might be onto something if our species didn't have sight at all.
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