A short cut to a new perspective
When I sat down to get my hair cut short, it had nothing to do with sex, politics or sexual politics. I intended no message to men or to other women. It was just time, I thought.
But later, as I held a bag full of caramel-colored, fuzzy curls that once dangled sassily from my head, I realized that that was shear naivete.
Some men, like a friend, Joe, believe women cut their hair short for two reasons: to signify a breakup with a guy or to mark the breaking away from men altogether.
In other words, some men believe consciously or otherwise that women cutting their hair is somehow related to spiting men -- because, after all, everything we women do to change ourselves is all for or about them.
Others simply equate femininity with long hair.
For the last year, I had polled my male friends. I planned to do it whether they approved or not, but I wanted to find out whether I’d lose friends over cutting my hair.
Mike, Kirk and Brian all weighed in. It was unanimous -- long live long hair. By standards of the black community, my hair qualified as long -- when my curls unfurled, they reached defiantly between my shoulder blades.
“There is a certain cachet and ideal to having long hair,” said Donna O. Kerner, an anthropology professor at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. “The socio-biological position is that it signifies fertility and general health.”
Great, so does that mean that cutting the hair translates to infertile and unhealthy? Two words discount that notion: Halle Berry -- totally desirable and, uh, healthy. There isn’t a man alive who could argue with that.
My hair, my mane attraction, has been my draw, that thing that catches the eye and invites a conversation. I would vary it as often as I changed my outfits -- straight, pulled back, curled and unruly, braided, twisted. My hair determined my personality. I didn’t have to choose who I was or what I wanted to project; I could hide behind the excuse that my hair made me do it.
When I didn’t have long, flowing locks, I faked it. That meant years of wearing falls, braids and weaves until my own hair caught up to the image. This also meant maintaining the illusion by swatting away a boyfriend’s hands from exploring too high up my neck to keep him from discovering where the hair was sewn on, which would have thrown cold water on a warm moment.
I don’t know about what role perceived fertility played, but I took courage from my tresses. My hair was the exclamation point at the end of a rant, the grand exit swinging behind me as I strode from a room, the prop I coyly twirled to affect vulnerability.
Come to think of it, my hair was due an Oscar nod for best supporting of a drama queen.
So, when the stubble-headed hairstylist took her scissors to my locks, she did more than transform my ‘do. With every snip that echoed in my ears, she unlocked something I hadn’t known was confined: me.
As it turns out, there just may be something to washing that man right out of your hair. Maybe the cut freed me from the past imperfect -- not just perms, coloring and split ends but life stresses, romantic scars and all too memorable split-ups.
“Your hair, which is actually dead matter, does reflect in its chemical composition just about everything that’s happened to you,” said Kerner, who teaches a freshman seminar called “Magic Hair.”
However, without my partner in crime, with nothing to hide behind, I have been forced to be the draw myself.
Oddly, the short cut has been the fast path to femininity: I have discovered my inner hottie. Skirts and dresses immediately flew out of the closet, and ultra-low-cut tight jeans are among my regular wardrobe choices.
Next to makeup and earrings, my eyes and lips have become my favored accessories. Whether natural or dressed up, they coordinate and convey my mood now -- playful, serious, flirtatious, skeptical, seductive. I’ve learned that I can do more with a narrowing or flashing of my eye and the pout of my lips than I could by tossing my curls.
The truth is, I get more male attention with the short ‘do than I did with the longer look. And I get the sense they’re seeing me -- and I’m being me.
Fertility be damned.
But in case there’s something to what the socio-biologists say, I’m going to keep my hairpieces on standby.
Michelle Maltais can be contacted at michelle.maltais @latimes.com.
