In praise of short hair

Gratuitous selfies and strong opinions ahead.

The day I got my first pixie cut (22nd of January, 2020), I told my hairdresser I loved it…and then went home and panicked.

Not because it looked bad (it didn’t). Not because he didn’t do what I’d asked for (he did).

But because I’d lost a safety blanket I didn’t even know I’d been holding onto.

Not only was I bucking society’s long-held view that women look better with long hair, I had done so so fully that I had nowhere left to hide. My face (often the source of my greatest insecurities) was on full display, my entire “vibe” had changed, and I had exactly one possible hairstyle for the foreseeable future.

To backtrack a little, I had always, always been obsessed with short hair. And I had always, always been told (and told myself) that someone with a round face like mine would look hideous with a pixie cut.

But something must have been in the air at the beginning of 2020 (other than COVID…*groans*), because I suddenly said…

…fuck it.

To my rather smug delight — once I got over the shock of my own completely exposed neck — my face looked slimmer with a pixie. In fact, the three years I kept this haircut were some of the most confident of my life. Take that, you anti-round-faced naysayers! I thought.

Predictably, my family hated it. My boyfriend (now husband) loved it. And weirdly…so did everyone else?

When I say everyone else, I mean people I thought didn’t know my name came up to me in a workplace I’d been at for three years to say things like “I just have to tell you…your hair looks fantastic. Like, you’ve transformed!”. It was like living in a very strange real-life rom-com montage (you know, right after the “ugly” heroine gets her makeover).

The thing was, I had transformed.

Without the safety blanket of “long hair = femininity” (a mindset I didn’t even know I was clinging to), I was free to explore what femininity meant to me. I had spent most of my twenties struggling to feel attractive, and now I felt like I’d somehow reached my final form. Not only had I ditched the time-consuming and annoying haircare routine (the ranty feminist in me screamed things about long hair weighing women down, literally), I felt free to be me…no rules, just authenticity.

There was no longer a blueprint for “sexy” for me to follow. I was out in hirsute no-man’s-land.

Unfortunately for my newfound freedom, the first pandemic lockdown delayed my next haircut significantly enough to acquaint me with mullet-dom before I could be rescued by the scissors once more.

But I was hooked. And I stayed hooked for three more years.

A very isolated COVID-19 lockdown Easter, pre-mullet.

The pixie cut raised several questions besides that of femininity. For the first time, I could see people trying to figure out my sexuality (my penchant for men’s blazers probably added to the confusion). I became fairly invisible to a large chunk of men, and completely irresistible to a select few.

It appears short hair is an acquired taste, for which some are starving.

I’ll be honest, sometimes it felt shit. Sometimes I wished I could swap back to long hair for the day and get my “ponytail privilege” back (i.e. meet the bare minimum for conventional female attractiveness). But mostly, I just felt the most “me” I’d ever felt.

Eventually, ever so slowly, boredom won out — although I can do almost zero hairstyles, I longed for the variety of being able to put my hair up. And here comes the only caution of this tale: growing out a pixie cut is not for the faint-hearted or low of self-esteem. The day I stopped looking like a mop was a long time coming. It will be the reason I think twice about returning to my beloved short cut.

But deep down? I know I will.

Because I’ve tasted freedom. And it was sweet AF.