Do you remember the mid-2000s nightmare doll called What’s Her Face? I say “nightmare” because she had a completely blank visage that you could draw features on, plus a selection of velcro wigs you could switch as you pleased, meaning when not in play she had a potato for a head. Horrific.
I had one and I loved her. I mean, what a gimmick. Didn’t like your eyes that day? Wipe them off and start again. Needed a new look? Pop off that green ponytail and try the pink fringe! Would that it were so easy in the real world, because I’ve been chasing the high of reinvention for about half my life.
I first cut my hair short at around 15. Up until that point, it had been one long, frizzy mass that I mostly kept back in a ponytail. I suspect I was directly inspired by my friend Kate, who had cut her similarly thick, curly hair into a choppy bob a few months prior. But lest you think it was a “cool” thing to do, it was not. In the heyday of the GHD? Please. Long, straight hair was the goal, and to actively work against that goal was tantamount to insanity.
For me, it was a (what I in retrospect see as a classic teenage) statement: I don’t fit into your little box, you pigs! I have SHORT hair. It’s DIFFERENT. I’m not like other girls. The problem was that I did want to be like other girls, but judging by the reception I got from my peers, I fell short. You can only have so many groups of lads looking at you like “It speaks?!” before you take drastic measures. Cutting off my hair was my way of getting out of that game altogether, the clearest possible message I could send. (It made sense at the time.)
My hair got shorter and shorter as I advanced through secondary school, culminating in a pixie that was aiming for Agyness Deyn but landed at young and hip nana. Like Icarus, I had flown too close to the sun. I didn’t “suit everything” as I had told myself. Still, I never stopped testing those limits. My hair hovered somewhere between my ears and my collarbone for the next ten years – purple streaks, pink tips, seven different shades of red box dye all at once, fringes, side parts, quiffs, always moving on to the next thing.
In March 2020, the last vestiges of my most recent bout with pink dye had just washed out. My hair was at my collarbone. And you can guess what happened next. Without access to hairdressers or the need to really do anything with my hair, it grew. By Christmas it was chest-length. By December 2021 it was practically a mermaid bra. And then I got engaged and it seemed crazy to do anything to it. Brides had… long hair? Right?
It was my first time ever having hair that jived with the typical “feminine ideal.” It was wavy and expensively highlighted and I just got up in the morning and shook it out and it looked good, and when it didn’t, a few goes of the Dyson would sort it. I loved it. It was by all measures a great head of hair. So of course, I had to get rid of it.
There are a few reasons for this. For one, it was very hot this summer and it felt like I was constantly wearing a hat and scarf. For another, I simply no longer identified with this particular head. I liked the femininity it lent me. It was easy to style. But it had also become a standard I couldn’t and didn’t care to hold myself to. I had spent the year before our wedding constantly evaluating and tuning my appearance to that standard and I was tired of it. It was time to get out of the game.
This isn’t to say I was immediately delighted with my new hair. I spent a few days wondering if I had completely destroyed any chance I had at being attractive. I’m still trying to remember how to style short hair again (especially for fancier events? I have no idea). But after living in my little bob for a few weeks now, I feel good. I like how different it is. I like that I no longer scalp myself by lying on my own hair. I like how it apparently makes me look younger (thanks to the one colleague who told me that and therefore made it true). I like that I have returned to what I feel is my default setting. I’m not trying to live up to anything or anyone else.
Do I wish I still had my long hair to pop on as I pleased, like a What’s Her Face doll? Kinda. But for now:
Thanks for reading and supporting Vanity Project! Truly I love to get in my feelings about the very normal act of cutting one’s hair. But if not for that, this newsletter would not exist, so… See you soon for the next one!