I used to be bold with my hair. It was shaved, or weirdly asymmetrical with spikes and rat-tails and blonde streaks and curls. It’s been an inch long but with bangs down to my chin, or past my shoulder blades. Done up in a single plait or bound in tiny braids around my face. Combed into a perfect Vulcan bob, or a bedraggled John Lennonesque hippie mess. Elvis pompadours and Ozzie man-cuts. Old lady perms and sleek, chic cascades. Blonde, strawberry, clown red, purple. Light and dark. Tall and small.
“Don’t worry,” I’ve told a hundred beauticians. “It grows back.”
My hair reflected me. Not any one style, but them all. I was never afraid of looking like an ass–which is good because I often did.
I got my hair cut this afternoon. “Just take a little off,” I said. “I don’t know what else to do.”
She took a little off.
I used to come out of a salon transformed. But today you can hardly tell I got a haircut. Something in me rejects the hell out of that. Something in me says that things are only worth doing if they are transformative.
So, I bought some dye. I wasn’t bold enough to choose anything too radical, but I’m reclaiming something I had lost–mutability.
Turn and face the strange. Yeah, let’s do this thing.