I’m considering having my hair cut. Does anyone else have this eternal self-inflicted cut-hair-then-grow-it-out cycle? I always want to change my hair once I’ve grown it long — it’s a vicious cycle that I fear I’ll never really escape. My hair grows very quickly and I get easily bored with my hair.
When I was in my late teens to mid-20s, I took quite a bit of paid hair jobs. So the hairstyle I had at that time was almost always dictated by the jobs that I did. Any changes that people wanted to make had to be agreed upon beforehand, but the problem with that was this: one person’s idea of a trim is completely different to the next person’s, and sometimes even the best intentions were lost in translations. There was one magazine job where “a small trim” for my long locks turned into a chin-length bob.
I’ve never considered myself being particularly attached to my long hair and I was being paid, but hair is a very personal thing, isn’t it? It plays a big role in our overall appearance. So I’d always get a horrible, squirmy feeling in my stomach as I heard unfamiliar hair phrases being discussed over the top of my head and saw the scissors gradually reaching higher with each snip. Ultimately, I had to relinquish all control over my hair and people did tend to be quite scissor-happy.
The hair jobs were a good source of income so I used to “suffer” the changes. Needless to say, my hair spent a lot of time getting drastically shorter. At one job, the hairstylist kept going shorter and shorter. I ended up with a bob so short that the nape of my neck was shaved. I had thought it was so exciting at that time, completely reinventing my look — something I would never have had done if I had any control.
What sparked my hair change itch was the “handsome short” style that is trending in Japan. It’s essentially a feminine, slightly longer take on a boyish cut. I think it’s such a fresh look and a bit different since everybody has mid-length hair or a bob. At the same time, I was looking through some old pictures of when I had short hair from a job, and I thought actually I really loved it and I want it like that again.
My brain is screaming the words “don’t cut it!” and “time-consuming!” at me, because it remembers each and every time that I’ve had short hair and being sort of forced to style it every day, but my heart is whispering “shorter is more stylish!”.
Last year, I chopped off my long hair into a bob on a whim (look at the pile of hair on my lap!) and I’ve been growing it out since. It now hangs there like curtains grazing my upper back or sits on top of my head in a messy bun, so I think stylish is what I’ll settle on.
