I made a great surrender to life in Amherst today: I got my hair cut.
Most men, on reading this sentence, might not get it. But I suspect that most women will. With apologies for the gender-typing, hair occupies this privileged psychic space for women. Getting your hair cut is not an errand, it’s a statement. It means, I’m comfortable with who I am. Or, I need to feel more feminine. Most of us have at least witnessed, if not personally experienced, the Breakup Bob. (Or, for the really unfortunate, the Breakup Buzz.)
My own emotional entanglement with hair goes back to a very unfortunate home haircut somewhere around second grade, when my mother decided to give me a short style that she called “Shingles.” Like the disease, only I don’t think she meant it that way. Unfortunately, that was also the year I had a recurring case of bronchitis, so I wound up on the sofa most of the time, just my shorn little head sticking up from the top of the afghan. I looked like a plague victim. The kids in my neighborhood called me “Andy” for a long time afterwards. It’s no surprise that I had hair down to my waist for ten years after that and that, as an adult, I am very, very careful who is allowed to wield scissors near my head.
Hair is power. Hair is control. Hair is identity.
I hadn’t planned on going for months without a haircut after moving. The plan, in fact, had been to find someone whose cut I liked and then to strike up a conversation about where she had it done, simple and easy. Only I’ve discovered that there’s nothing simple or easy about striking up much of any kind of conversation here. And, as time passed and I grew (regrettably) more suspicious of this town that wasn’t providing me with instant happiness, I wasn’t about to give up power, or control, or identity, not on a bet.
Oh, I did get a cut once–a trim in October. I even brought in a picture from my ordination to show exactly how it should look. (Because, of course, if my hair looks the same, the rest of my life will follow, right?)
But then I discovered that you can’t go back. When the hair grew out, it wasn’t the same, even though the stylist had done a fine job. I even tried to get a cut back at the old salon in Virginia, and that wasn’t the same, either. And I’d started to get cowlicks, strange flips and kinks that didn’t belong.
Thus it was that I found myself this morning in Dana’s chair with a copy of “Celebrity Hairstyles,” saying the thing that is hardest to say: Go ahead. I trust you.
So now I’m sporting a layered bob that looks probably no different to ninety-nine percent of the world but is still new and strange on me. The jury is still out about whether I like it. Either way, it will grow out. Time will change things.
After all, as my husband always points out, it’s only hair.
