I’ve really been thinking about it for awhile now. I was thinking about it, in fact, when I was getting my hair cut a few weeks ago. I even mentioned it to my wonderful hairdresser– and this is not the first time, either. But both times– this most recent time and also back in May– when I told her that I wanted my bangs shorter, she just didn’t seem to understand.
Shorter? I couldn’t mean shorter, could I? As in, not as long as they currently are? As in, you know, short?
And since I am no fashion maven, and since I trust my wonderful hairdresser (and she really is a wonderful hairdresser) to make me feel beautiful, I didn’t press the issue. “Just make them like yours,” I think, is what I said, or something to that effect. And that seemed to work for both of us.
But I had seen it, hadn’t I? On this magazine cover or that one, one of those covers upon which my gaze falls when I am standing in line at the grocery store. Or on one of those television shows that I didn’t watch but saw the preview for sometime during the Olympics. Or before that. Or something. Yes, I’ve seen bangs making a comeback: a lovely and thickish fringe that stops above the eyebrows and is pushed neatly to the side and looks Nice.
I had had that once before. I thought I might like to try it again. Plus, my Very Long bangs are, in all truth, driving me crazy. I am forever pushing them behind my ears or over my head or wondering if I’m cute enough to get away with one of those darling clips that my friends wear to handle this problem.
But I had asked my hairdresser and she had, in effect, said no.
And then yesterday, I got past it. I decided that it’s my hair and I’ll cut it if I want to. It’s just bangs, right? How hard can it be? It won’t ruin my hair style, won’t dry my hair out, won’t– even if it’s poorly or crookedly done– be awful.
So I did it. Yesterday evening I stood before my bathroom mirror with a small pair of scissors and drew out in front of my eyes the Very Long Hair posing as bangs and just trimmed it off. A slice of the scissor and there we are! I can see my eyes and my eyes can see me. I liked it. I did.
Then morning came and confronted me with my shower and the need to style my hair. Suddenly my cute and sassy bangs looked different somehow. They weren’t quite so chic as they had appeared the night before. They were short in a way I hadn’t noticed. The truth hit: Wow! These bangs look like Audrey Hepburn.
Which is a good thing, if one happens to look like Audrey Hepburn. I Don’t.
The last time this happened I was in the twelfth grade. I’m pretty sure I was my own victim, and I know that my bangs were Too Short. But things were different then. In those days we wore our bangs in a big poof at the front of our heads. The ignominy with which I presented myself back in the late eighties looked, well, different.
Funny, though, what I am finding the same. Like the phrases that have been running through my head since I styled my hair this morning, the phrases I’ve said aloud or in my mind while styling Emma’s hair after one of her assaults with the scissors: “It’s only hair.” “Other people wish that this were the extent of their problems.” “If I push it over like this it’s not so noticeable.” It is only hair. Other people might not even notice.
Still, mirror or no, I’ve thought of it a time or two or three today. What have I done to my hair?
At which time the Most Comforting refrain surfaces, the classic, the favorite, the one I know you know. And it is, isn’t it? a Mercy: “It will grow back.”
