Yesterday, I got a haircut.  My hair was probably down to my middle back before the cut, and now it’s well above my shoulders.  I’ve noticed several things immediately:

• I no longer feel like such a – pardon my expression – “dirty hippie.”
• Either I get more double-takes, or I notice them more, because I no longer have this huge amount of hair blocking my view.
• I feel different.  It’s very hard to explain.

It took a lot of courage to cut my hair, and if I’d had my way it would have been shorter still. (The stylist was reluctant to go all the way – “you’ve never had your hair that short, and you don’t know if you would like it,” she explained, to which I wanted to retaliate I am nineteen years old and I think I know what I want, thank you very much, but I didn’t because I am an overly nice person and I like to be kind to the people who take my personal appearance, quite literally, in their hands.)  The only thing I couldn’t figure out was why.  Why was it so hard for me to cut my hair?  What are the social implications of having long versus short hair?

Here are the things I came up with:

• Long hair, on women, symbolizes health and sexual vitality on a subconscious level. In Houston, long, straight, sleek hair is an especial status symbol because it takes a lot of work to maintain in such a humid climate.
• However, a woman absolutely cannot have visible hair anywhere else on her body if she is to conform to acceptable standards of beauty.  Women must shave their legs and armpits, wax their facial hair, and trim, shave, or wax “down below,” or risk being labeled “hippies,” “ugly,” or “weird.”

Let’s talk for a moment about pubic hair.  I know we are all adults and that it’s fairly common knowledge that virtually all post-pubescent adults have pubic hair, to one extent or another.  With that in mind – and this is entirely my opinion, of course – I find it just a little creepy that most of the men in my age group prefer women’s pubic hair to be scanty or nonexistent, mimicking the natural state of a prepubescent girl’s body.  “It’s cleaner,” they say.  “Pubic hair is gross.”  To which I remind them that shaving and waxing damages skin, even to the point of creating fertile breeding ground for bacteria.

It comes down to this.  Women endure the pain and inconvenience of waxing, plucking, and shaving their body hair, and conditioning, straightening, curling, dyeing, and styling the hair on their heads in accordance with the current fashion.  Having good-looking hair is so important that we will literally spend hours in front of the mirror working on it.

I realized all this a few months ago.  I stood looking at myself, puffy-eyed in the mirror from crying over yet another of my features that refused to behave.  Maybe it was the thick, wavy hair that never would flow as nicely as my white and Asian friends’.  Or someone teasing me about the “mustache” that I refuse to wax.  I took all of this in, stood for a moment wobbling as if I were knee-deep in the ocean, and then I thought:

What on earth am I doing?

Why do I care so much about what other people think of my appearance?  Why do I spend hours trying to please their sense of aesthetics?  I wouldn’t decorate my house to suit someone else, so why would I decorate my body in any other way than to please myself?

Dear ladies – I can only speak to you because I honestly know nothing about what men go through when they see themselves in the mirror – hair is keratin.  That’s it.  It is dead by the time it emerges from your scalp.  What you do with it is entirely up to you.  If a man is squeamish about your pubic hair, maybe he isn’t the best guy to be intimate with.  If someone teases you about your mustache, remind them that everyone has a mustache.

Hair is there for a reason.  Humans have been evolving for so, so long, hair and all, and every bit of hair, whether facial, scalp, arm, or leg, was once the difference between life and death for our ancestors.  Hair is an extension of the human body, and therefore beautiful in its own right, regardless of length, texture, or color.  I beg of you, if you do nothing else today, look at yourself in the mirror.  Change anything you don’t like about yourself and your hair, but that should be the only reason you change at all.  Easier said than done, of course, and it’s something many people have forgotten how to do.

I think my hair is staying short for a while.