the deepest cut

If you go to the bio page on my website and look at my photo, you will see that I have long hair. It’s good hair, healthy and strong, and there’s a lot of it, so it looks pretty good long. But it’s basically looked the same for half a dozen years now, and I’m bored with it. So this Saturday, I have an appointment to get it whacked off, and I’m a little nervous.

It’s not like I’ve never had short hair before, it's just been a while. It’s was pixie short right out of college, which didn’t suit my face at all, and in college it was been slightly-longer-than-chin-length short, which did suit my face. That’s what I’m going for this time. But you know, I find myself hesitating, for a couple of reasons.

First: I am not twenty anymore, and my face shape has changed a little bit. Not drastically – it’s not like my jawline is hanging down around my collarbone or anything – but the angles and planes that defined my face in my youth are a little softer now, a little more rounded. And sometimes when I hold my hair up to approximate the length I’m thinking of…well, I’m just not sure. I don’t want this hairstyle to make me look OLDER, for God’s sake, and I’m afraid it will.

So that’s the main reason. Another reason, which isn’t really a reason but more of a point to ponder is…my boyfriend hates the idea.

I know, I know – it’s my hair, and I can do with it what I want. And he is fully aware that any attempt to control my decisions in this area would result in some unfriendly conversation, so he doesn’t go there, and he’s not that guy anyway. But I can tell when I talk about it that he’s not thrilled with the idea. He says things like, “I will support you in this decision,” as though I’m talking about joining the Peace Corps and building roads in Botswana for two years instead of getting a new do.

I think part of it is that he can’t picture me without long hair. We’ve been dating just over a year, and the only picture he’s seen of me with it short is my old passport photo. Which, even without the bad pixie-do is a bad picture. He likes my hair, likes stroking or playing with it, and the idea of it not being there anymore bothers him.

I also think he has the idea that a lot of guys (and girls) have, which is long hair = female = sexy. And there’s something to that, but I don’t think it’s a hard and fast rule. We have a friend who used to have lovely long blond hair that she now wears in a tight little cap that feathers toward her face. She looks absolutely darling, and in some ways even more sexy as her look is more edgy this way. But of course, if I ask my guy if he thinks she looks nice he agrees that she does, then ads, “but her long hair was really pretty”.

In any case, I’m getting my hair cut. It might be a huge mistake, in which case I’ll just hate the way I look for six months while it grows out and my guy will say “I told you so” a lot. Which won’t be pleasant, but it won’t last forever. After all, it’s just hair – not two years in Botswana.