November 11, 2022

bangs

People make jokes about bangs. Regretting getting bangs. Bangs that are symbolic of a great, existential purpose. Bangs cut during a manic episode. Certain types of bangs defining certain types of personalities (girls with baby bangs). French girls with bangs making you want bangs and then making you feel bad about looking gross with bangs. 

The truth is, bangs are incredible because bangs are always there when you need to change something in your life but you don’t want to actually do the work to change anything in your life. You want to quit smoking, you just get bangs. You want to establish a fitness routine, you just get bangs. You want to feel more sexually satisfied, just get bangs. You want a career change, you just get bangs, girl. It’s a new you, without making any deep, concerted, inward effort to change. And all of that is certainly worthy of joking about. Except that the emotional trenches one is forced through in order to acquire bangs might actually change us spiritually, intellectually, existentially without us knowing or consenting to it. 

I cry every single time I get a haircut because my mother used to describe my long blonde hair with words like “cascading” and “Veronica Lake-esque,” so I’ve associated a lot of value in my hair and I like to blame my mother for things like that. I got bangs on Wednesday because I needed a change and Taylor Swift dropped an album three weeks ago. After the bangs happened, after I left the salon and told the hairstylist that I “loved it so much” and tipped 30%, I cried on the subway, shielded the upper half of my face with my hand like a drunk Olsen twin, and texted my best friend that I wanted to die. I told her I wanted to drown myself in a river rather than have anyone in the world seeing me with massacred hair, this tonsorial atrocity. My cascading blonde hair chopped mercilessly, but just in the front, sacrificing the effect of the rest of my golden tresses. I did not look like a French girl, non, pas de tout. If anyone saw me like this, I would be as good as dead (I have a reputation to uphold!) so why not just do it myself. Take me Jesus, take me from this new-bang world, take me to a place where I don’t have bangs and everything is good in my life. Please.

My friend texted back: “you’re crazy about hair.” It was a good reminder. I’m 31-years-old now and life was presenting me with an opportunity to be brave, to place value in other things, like hobbies and taste in wine, and not just in my beautiful hair. My looks can’t be everything. Time to buck up, buttercup. You want to look like a French girl? Where’s all the laissez-faire? You think those girls cry after getting bangs? They just have mean sex with someone nearby, probably. If there was ever a time to laugh in the face of adversity, it was now, on the brink of a bangs-based mental breakdown.   

I decided I liked my bangs after I bravely fixed them a little bit, put them the way I like them. It dawned on me that I am actually gorgeous and look amazing with bangs.Feeling suicidal because I felt ugly for 20 minutes is definitely something I should examine in therapy, at a later date. But now that I don’t feel ugly, now that I feel gorgeous again, that I have beautiful swoopy bangs complimenting my cascading locks, everything is amazing. I am a changed woman, inside and out.