Every girl envies what they can't have. If you have curly hair, you want straight hair. If you have straight hair, you want curly hair. If you have brown eyes, you want blue eyes. If you have blue eyes, you want green eyes. It's a never-ending cycle of wants. By the time you realize that you have no chance of getting the things that you don't have, you've already picked out everything else that you don't like about yourself. Eventually you tear yourself apart to the point of not liking a single thing about yourself.
I, like every other girl, was struggling with the same thing. I had a crappy year throughout 2017, and 2018 was approaching. I was ready to breakup with 2017 and turn myself into the person that I've always wanted to be. I was going to go through a major renovation with myself. One of those things on my to-do list: chop my hair off.
Chopping your hair off is the most evident and most common sign of "I've gone through a rough break-up, but now I'm ready to move on."
I needed a new look, a new demeanor, pretty much a new everything. Chopping my hair off was the only way I knew how to put this plan in motion. I set up a hair appointment with the girl who has done my hair for almost three years and told her we were doing a major transformation. I walked into the salon with long, straight, golden-blonde hair and left with short, straight, platinum hair.
Of course at the time, I fell in love with my hair. This was the new me. Everybody loved my hair, thankfully. But after a few weeks went by, I started noticing a change in things around me; they were little things, but still things nonetheless.
When I walked past the construction workers on my way to class in the morning, I no longer felt their stares piercing through my clothes as I walked by.
When I was in a professional setting, I could feel people no longer taking me seriously.
I no longer felt comfortable in my new skin. I was obviously upset because I no longer felt like myself. But then again, wasn't that the point?
I started thinking about the way I was treated when I had long hair versus now when I have short hair. I was still me, just looked a little different. That's when it hit me.
People judge you on your looks and what they deem as acceptable.
How often have you seen someone with short hair in their twenties be treated the same as someone with long hair? I even asked my friend who also had short hair if she was treated differently than our third friend who had hair down to her butt. Her response, "I can always tell that I am never their first choice when we're all at a bar. The world made it so that people with long hair are viewed as more beautiful than us short-haired people."
She was exactly right. The world and men just view long hair as more beautiful than short hair. That's what society deemed as beautiful.
Just because I cut my hair short doesn't change the way I view myself as beautiful. I am happy that I cut my hair off because now I can see who has fallen into the ways of societal norms.
I'm not happy that I have to prove my age when people see my short hair because they think I'm still in high school, but that's besides the point. I am not letting society tell me that I'm not beautiful because I don't have long hair anymore.
