Hair. We Care.

I don't think I realized the importance of hair until I started toying with mine. That's usually how these thing happen: We want to be defined by our brains, by our most humorous senses, by the fingers we don't use to multiply. Instead we are most notable for the things on top of our heads: Hats, bows, hair (or maybe that's just me). 

My hair went from brown to red  the summer before my senior year of high school. I wanted to establish myself as the kind of individual whose hair was red. If that sounds like an awkward admission, I think-as auburn has grown in popularity- the idea that color is reflective of our personalities has become even more widely accepted. If nothing else, harkening back to the old adage about books and their covers, it's much easier to refer to hair color than it is to recall what came after it. 

According to 'All Women Stalk" Redheads are "Feisty but Creative." 
Urban Dictionary decrees that redheads are "Extremely hot girls who just can't help being so sexy."

All confusing gender specifics aside, hair color says a lot. I've, happily, been a $3-boxed-redhead ever since the first time I sprayed dye all over the mirror in my mother's bathroom. Better yet, I've  even found myself gravitating towards other pseudo-gingers, in an act of solidarity.  

When I first dyed my hair, I was keeping it  long, by my standards. That's to say, my hair waved past my shoulders, pooling in a mass of purple split ends and summer vacation (because red, it turns out, isn't always the easiest color to master). I was keeping it on the longer side, after years of short hair, because it was senior year and I wanted to be a musical theatre major in college. I associated long hair with actresses: The embodiment of sex appeal and pretty things (Lately, I've been calling long hair "Princess Hair" as I pull on my shoulder-length strands and lament their slow regrowth). Long hair was pretty- and difficult to maintain, for a fluff-head such as myself. The long hair had to go.

Immediately following audition season, I went for the bob. Then, of course, in the ultimate vicious circle, I longed for the days of side-braids and the long, seductive, hair-flipping (that really ever seems seductive or properly flippy in our own heads). 

It's three years later: The top of my head has morphed from a mass of brown to a rich magenta, to the bright blood-tones of Halloween- and now, on a good day, it's a little more natural. I've gone through the Dutch-boy hair phase, the shoulder length-straighten-into-submission (and its sister, the shoulder-length curly/frizzy/humidity induced hair). I've had short boyish-hair, and more of that awkward growing-out stage than anyone I know. And still I spend months attempting to be decisive.

Like, last summer, when the girls I was RA for convinced me I would look "Just like Marilyn Monroe" if I had blonde hair. And then dyed my hair a truly terrible carrot-top with too-white coloring that just made me look kind of awful. *Note to self: Blondes don't always have more fun, especially when they're employing all of their best hats to ensure there is little photographic evidence. 

Call it narcissism but I don't really think it is. So many of our interactions exist solely by profile picture, these days, that a poor haircut could deter future employers or even- friends. I think you know who your true friends are when you  drastically shave off most of your hair and ask them to love you anyway. Many forge a very phone-friendly relationship with you for the eight months it takes for your hair to fringe out across your ears. 

Does anyone remember that article Girls With Short Hair are Damaged that sparked a frenzy of feminists and short-folicled at large? If not, basically, this bitter dude decides to go on a rampage about how girls with short hair are always uglier than girls with long hair and how, every time you cut your hair, you're basically asking to be ignored by the opposite sex. That's fine. If the opposite sex is shallow enough to ignore all of me when my hair is short (I'm talking to you, dude) the opposite sex isn't worthy of my long hair, anyway. 

I love short hair. It's cute. It's easy. 

Rapunzel looked so much cuter rocking the glass-snaggled hair, anyway. 

But...maybe I won't cut mine just yet.