I seem to keep forgetting that no amount of face-framing layers will give me Angelina’s cheekbones if I continue to use my gym gear as sofa wear.
So, there I was again perched in a salon chair facing myself with a fresh new cut — like all the times previously — feigning delight so well practiced that even I almost believed me. At the end of every salon appointment, I would trudge out the double doors thinking the style looked ok, secretly a smidge disappointed, and my hopes dashed that I didn’t get the Farah Fawcett ‘swoop’ I envisaged, thinking “Perhaps a fancier salon could accomplish it next time?”
Fifty Shades of Hair
I’ve had maroon hair when Marsala was Pantone’s colour of the year, and I’ve sported bangs on my tiny forehead when I discovered Jamila Jamil.
I could barely peer through the thick curtain of hair to see my face in the mirror, but boy did I look trendy. I committed a whole month to those maroon bangs, skirting humidity like the plague and looking like a human equivalent of an English sheepdog with mean hair straightener skills. On the plus side, I didn’t have to groom my eyebrows for a month, and nobody could tell how surprised or angry I was for ages, but I did keep walking into things. So I’m not too sure how much of a bonus that was.
Then came the blonde-ish phase. I say ‘ish’ because I am a deep brunette, and I’d be lying if I said my hair could reach the Nordic spun gold that blonde typically looks like.
If I was given a gold ring the color of my golden blonde hair, I’d think it had rusted or was salvaged from a ship-wreck. “Titanic, dear, are you missing some treasure?”
In my defense, I had the caramel balayage phase when I used to work in fashion, and it did look pretty. The chic girls at work would gush over it for weeks until they found someone else with a new thing to worship- I believe someone wore MAC’s Ruby Woo one day and that was the end of me. Then when gaggles of YouTube Beauty Gurus started showing off collar bone length tresses, there I was on that bandwagon yelling “Yeehaa!”.
My curls were ironed into submission for an hour after a shower and hissed at to sit still and behave, or else. It looked pretty swish, but the upkeep was one heck of an ordeal.
How I still have hair on my head after all this chopping and changing, beats me.
Social Comparison Theory: To whom are we comparing ourselves?
The best hair of my life happened by complete accident when I ditched the pinned Pinterest catalog and relied on an experienced hairstylist’s expertise to create a color that suited me.
I had an open mind, for once, and I trusted her to do her thing.
Her suggestions didn’t sound that impressive to me, to be honest. She never mentioned face-framing highlights or lowlights like the magazines typically recommend, and gently mentioned trying those things later. Instead, my hair ended up perhaps just a shade lighter and trimmed here and there.
There I sat flabbergasted, jaw unhinged, in the salon chair crowned in the most flattering shades of mahogany browns I’d ever experienced. I felt spectacular. It wasn’t even about how it looked anymore, I just felt good in my skin. Also, it looked nothing like anyone else’s hair because it was tailored exactly to me, and it has been so much cheaper to look after because I’m not aspiring it to be something it isn’t.
So where did I get those grand hair ideas that lead me astray in the first place?
This is where the Social Comparison Model kicks in.
Every day we compare ourselves to others across various domains. We continuously assess how popular we are, how much money we make on Medium compared to other writers, how successful we are at various things, and also how we look. I’m looking at you Pinterest and Instagram…
This process of self-evaluation is called Social Comparison and there are two types of comparisons we make that have an impact on our self-esteem; Upward and Downward comparisons. I’d like us to pay particular attention to the Upward Comparison here. Upward Social Comparison happens when we compare ourselves to someone we see as better than ourselves, or whom we hold in high esteem in a particular domain. Social comparison can motivate people to improve, but it can also promote judgmental, biased, and overly competitive or superior attitudes.
Research tells us that the lower our self-esteem, the more we tend to compare upwards, however, the downfall is that this typically leads to feeling worse about ourselves — in other words, it is an unhelpful cycle.
In my case, I kept chasing after the perfect style at the end of the rainbow. The next new look was always around the corner, and I’d feel great for about five minutes until the next style everyone talked about beckoned. No wonder I never felt like I’d found The One. It didn’t exist. It was like chasing a carrot on the end of a stick. Also, I’ve come to realize that this behavior applies to everything else in the same vein; remember those Lululemon leggings, and Nike kicks that you bought? That top-down photo of your latte for breakfast on Facebook? How much of our everyday mundane actions are based on external validation?
The only way to get ourselves off this doomed cycle of social comparison is:
- Realize its happening (subconsciously)
And,
2. Question why we base our self-esteem on external validation in the first place?
We can gain our self-esteem from external sources by comparing ourselves to others, or we can build on our self-esteem by being our own guiding source and accomplish goals that truly matter to our inner selves instead. The first is a slippery slope towards aspiring to be someone that you are very much not, and the latter allows us to achieve true fulfillment and inner confidence from being our true selves.
Only the truth of who you are, if realized, will set you free.”
― Eckhart Tolle.
Life is all about the joy of experimenting and trying new things out for yourself. Don’t do what I did, which was to accidentally veer left off the path of self-love, in search of fulfillment and acceptance in the guise of a new do instead.
It has taken so many hair salons all over the country, hair stylists of various backgrounds, nationalities, skill levels, and all this time for me to realize that it was never about the ultimate skill or the next trend. I felt amazing when I was the best version of me, and it doesn’t take an award-winning salon, or a crowd of admirers to make it happen.
