Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow
In the last month, almost all of the women in my office have transformed their hair. Color, cut, style, you name it and someone in my office has done it. On last Saturday, I cut my hair. After a spell of wanting to grow it long, I realized that long hair is no good when all you do with it is tie it back in a ponytail anyway. So I went to the salon and took my mid-back length hair and cut it into a super short bob with ringlets that end just at the nape of my neck.

I didn't even think twice about cutting my hair, it's my hair after all. But some of the women in my office were so concerned about how others would feel if they changed their hair, worried that it wouldn't be liked or that by changing their hair it somehow changed them. One woman was so sure that her mother would hate it that she didn't even mention the cut or the fact that she went from a blonde to a brunette to her at all. She just showed up at her house the next weekend and hoped for the best. And as it turned out, the best wasn't so good. Another woman knew that her father, a man who associates femininity with hair length, would be angry that she cut her long hair from bottom skimming length to the middle of her back. She too hasn't told her parents, she plans to unveil the look on the next visit home.

The whole air of drama that has surrounded these hair transformations has really left me wondering why is it that so much of our identity as women is tied to our hair? How long we choose to keep our hair somehow reflects the type of woman we are or the color we choose or the style in which we wear it. And it's a whole different kind of drama for black women. I saw a movie today where the woman dared to take out her weave and go with her natural hair length and the drama was so big, about so much more than just hair. It was about status and sexiness and availability and a whole bunch of other things that should be influenced by a lot more than one's hair. When I went to cut mine last week and sat in the chair at a black beauty salon when I asked the man to chop it all off not only he but a woman waiting in one of the chairs by the window were both so concerned and asked more than once if I was sure that I wanted to "get rid of all that beautiful hair!" I was definitely sure but they couldn't understand it at all.

I'm not saying that I know the answers. I care just as much about how my hair looks as the next woman, but I guess it wasn't until very recently that I realized how much my hair says about me to others, what it displays about the type of woman I am on a completely different level than I can really understand. My theory has always been, "it'll grow back,"and when it does I'll probably just cut it again. I probably won't even think twice about it, but apparently everyone else will.