Nearly every girl with long hair has looked in the mirror at her unruly, tangled, and/or frizzy tresses and has been tempted to grab a pair of scissors and free herself of the agony of that particular “bad hair day”. However, only a few among us are brave enough to have actually done the deed of chopping off their hair. I have personally spent far too much time and money on Brazilian Blow-drys, frizz control serums, straightening irons and paddle brushes. So I wondered, who are the brave and bold and beautiful Barnard women who have dared to lop off their locks? I set out to find them on campus and wasn’t surprised that it took time and effort track down short-haired collegiates.
First we must define “short” which I qualify as anywhere from a long bob (above the shoulders) to a pixie cut. Everywhere I looked was long hair: straight, wavy, curly, blond, brunette, and redhead. Only later, in my ballet class, did I come across a girl whose hair had been cropped close to her head. Intrigued, I approached her.
Valerie, a senior at CC, revealed to me that she had worn her hair long all through high school but the summer before college she decided to cut it off for maintenance purposes. She intends to keep her hair short because she loves that it takes her barely any time at all to wash and style it. This knowledge prompted me to want to learn the stories behind other girls’ short hairstyles–if they’d had similar inspirations and if they ever regretted their decisions. Lily, a BC sophomore, cut her hair short during finals week last fall. She said stress was partly to blame for the new hairstyle, but Lily had always been curious about how she would look with short hair. Lily is is in the process of growing it back. She loves, however, that she “hasn’t had to touch a hairbrush in a year”. Sound tempting? There’s something liberating about not being a slave to your round brush and flat iron.
Women began to wear their hair long and loose in the 60’s when they also burned their bras in effort to free themselves from the stiff and uncomfortable bindings and teased and sprayed bouffant hairstyles of previous generations. Ironically, this was also the era that the super model Twiggy popularized the pixie cut. Regardless of whether we choose to wear our hair long and streaming or cute and close-cropped, hairstyles speak volumes about who we are and is the ultimate form of self-expression.