#6: The Disembodied Ponytail
Dear fourteen year old self, I have a confession to make — I cut off all my hair.
Around the age of fourteen, I decided the only chance I had of looking vaguely pretty was to grow my hair. Yet six years later 30cm of my hair is sat on my desk in a freezer bag.
I’ll admit — it looks a bit grim. A tad forensic.
It’s another object out of its normal place, like Katie’s outdoor seat, only this time, I know its history.
I know that it was born of a teenage desire to fit in; that it grew from the idea instilled in all young girls that they should want to be a princess; that it unknowingly became my defensive curtain.
I didn’t realise until it was gone just how much it had been hiding. Apparently I own a pair collarbones and, who knew, tops have necklines.
I also know why I wanted to cut it off. Practically, long, thick hair in a student house is a nightmare. It never dries even if you essentially incinerate it with a hair drier and so will always be a tiny bit, icily damp. Psychologically, I am about to turn twenty one and look for grad jobs. The days of grinning and swinging my ponytail are over. I needed a change.
And I even know where it is going, all 30cm in a padded envelope to The Little Princess Trust.
My life has changed a lot over the last few years. There’s obvious milestones like going to university and renting my first house, but it’s more than that. Things happen. The world changes. The EU begins to collapse.
The post-breakup haircut is an all too familiar phenomenon — Creating change that you can control, attempting to make life better and different to what it was before.
Well, my haircut wasn’t post-breakup (unless we’re talking Brexit). Instead of trying to enforce change upon my life, the change had already happened, I was just desperately trying to keep up.
Hair is the one thing about our appearance we have some control over. If you want shorter arms (and I have gorilla arms so could tell you all about this), you can’t just give them a trim.
Hair can be dyed, cut, curled, straightened, crimped even, if you are a 90s kind of girl. Of course, there is a certain natural base to work from, but what you do with that, is completely up to you. And also haircuts are pretty permanent. They’re pretty gutsy.
And that is just it. As this blog probably shows, I get hooked on symbols and hair has always been symbolic. Think Samson and Delilah. Think Rapunzel. Or perhaps don’t. The cutting of hair in these stories really does not end well.
But cutting my hair was a symbolic act.
It was hello future. Hello grad jobs. Hello Ellie who actually feels like she could turn twenty one in twelve days. Hello someone who does not just think, but does.
Let’s just hope it works.
P.S. If you would also like to complete a symbolic act, click here for more information on donating your hair.
