Hear the ramblings of a convert to forbidden ways.
I’ve had long hair since I was 3 years old. I was told it was lovely. I was crimped, curled, braided and chignoned.
Consider the months of my life I’ve spent fixing my hair!
Some of these were rites of passage.
Age 8: Aquanet is fuel. My sister turned me into a human bomb.
Age 12: I shared concealer cream with a friend after we both burned our foreheads with curling irons while prepping for a dance.
Age 19: My wedding day, my hair rebelled. The injustice of having to worry about such a trivial, stupid thing hit me sideways, and I cried. My Aunt Tricia rushed into the room with a pick comb before the tears could mar my makeup.
Then came Sunday.
The caprice, the suspicion that anything is possible started in my spine and crept up to my brain stem. Finally, my frontal lobe. It resembled faintly the opening pages of “Crime and Punishment” except I didn’t want to axe-murder anyone.
I wanted to cut off my hair.
I showered. Shampooed and conditioned. Raked my fingers through the oblong mane.
Why? I wondered.
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a short story called “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” about an awkward girl who asks her cousin for advice on speaking to men.
Start by saying something controversial, like you’re thinking about bobbing your hair, answers the glamorous cousin.
Bernice does, but she also flirts with her cousin’s boyfriend, which is an Absolutely-Not Move.
So the cousin calls Bernice’s bluff, gathers all their beaux and takes Bernice to the hairdresser’s - where the girl receives an unbecoming bob.
In the night, Bernice slices off her cousin’s hair as revenge.
When men read that story, they think it means don’t make boasts you can’t fulfill.
When women read it, they think it means don’t cut your hair.
But in between modest trims and layerings, I’ve been growing out my hair for more than 30 years.
“Get one of those apps, you know, that can tell you how you’d look with different hairstyles,” advised The Husband on Sunday.
“OK,” I nodded.
Sure, these three decades I grew it out because I was scared to cut it, I felt it looked feminine; I harbored stereotypes about hair length that I still haven’t parsed into words.
But on Sunday, the wayward impulse had already gripped me. The decades of fussing with my hair, worrying how it looks and pouring my life into it had compounded into a load I could no longer shoulder. At least, not with all this other grownup stuff like raising kids, fixing toilets, wondering what’s the culinary equivalent of fennel.
I conflated my hair with everything worrisome. Every Sisyphean task I’ve known.
I thought of the books I haven’t read and the gardens I haven’t grown.
I wondered why it’s been so important to show the world I have a lot of dead stuff streaming from my scalp, and that this dead stuff can curl. These dead brown grasses are poofier than other people’s dead brown grasses.
Oh, look at me, look at me... Even though I’m just one mortal in the vast aggregate mosaic. A mere shard of the masterpiece.
I walked into the bathroom and cut One. Longish. Angled. Bob.
Don’t worry, a YouTube-video woman with purple hair and bleached eyebrows showed me how to do it right.
I laughed out loud.
“What the – Clair!” said The Husband. “You cut off your hair!”
“I KNOW!” I chirped, grinning.
“It looks – “ he hesitated. Looked twice. Looked again. “It actually looks good.”
I am struck by how one simple change to this stupid scalp foliage can change everything else.
At the store I see women with tight braids and think, “Oh poor dear, you’ve tangled up parts of yourself into knots.”
I go to loop my keys’ lanyard around my neck and push one palm upward against the back of my head – to lug my hair out of the way – but there’s no resistance. My hand shoots up and palms the sky.
For decades the hair ties have perturbed me. Edgar Allen Poe has no idea.
Where’s my hair tie? What if I need it? Did I overstretch it? Did I lose it? Why don’t I feel that comforting pressure on my wrist, of a hair tie in waiting?
Oh, guess what. That doesn’t matter now. Neither does mousse, neither do hot curlers.
I enter rooms - enter life - like a boxer entering the ring.
How’s my hair?
Who cares! Let’s rumble.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
