Competition for the Cruises?

The transformation was almost complete. Three inches had been lopped off my hair and the Gwyneth look was being ushered in. The bangs had indeed grown out. Just in time too because I’m headed to Atalanta this week for a work thang and wanted I my hair to look it’s shiny best.

Then the unthinkable happened.

Fringe.

Just a bit. Um.. OK, that’s fine I suppose until my stylist took out a large chunk by accident or what, I’m still confused. I screamed, “WHOA! WHOA! WHOOOAAAH! What are you doing?!?! WHAT just happened?!” She looked at me in horror and realized that she had gone and taken out too large of a chunk. She claimed she could fix it and I braced myself, white knuckled in the chair. I knew what was coming. Gone would be the cut I had taken a year to achieve. Ushered in would be the cut that I had painstainkingly grown out in the last year. The hair style I loathed the most. My BP escalated as I watched more fringe being cut in and my long hair now being reduced to just the back. Yick. I was left with what reminded me of the Florence Henderson ‘do.

I would not cry.

Suddenly, it was clear. The only way to fix this mishap would be to just cut it all off. I would go from cutting off three inches to six. Oy. Not the look I was trying to achieve. There are a couple of reasons I’m uber-sensitive about my hair. Not only is it tough to grow out but my hair is like a talismn. When I was a gawky teen with longer hair I had some issues, shall we say? My hair was one way certain people exerted their control over me. I left the smallest state in the country to get away from this person and still with about eight states between us the problems continued. I promptly transferred to another university and spent the first week skipping around campus Julia Roberts-style a la Sleeping with the Enemy. It was then that I cut my hair. I turned myself into the platinum blonde cute (a term I loathe. I would rather be called a C. U. Next Tuesday) college coed.

In this new ‘do I seemed sunny on the outside but the angry, man-hating and fearing girl who was never anything more than cute (think 5 year-olds, bunnies, fluffy clouds, giant lollipops and the color pink.) was roiling away in a dark, twisted mess on the inside. I wanted a WWF style smackdown cage fight with the world. I raged often breaking glass in my sorority house parking lot just for the release. I went to group and one -on-one therapy. It too me years to get over that earlier mess. I felt like I had been through a war. I worked so hard to emerge a woman who had no bitterness and hate. A woman with self-esteem. What transpired was a the person I am today with longer hair. Hair that I could put in a ponytail if I so chose and no one was going to tell me to take it out and cover my face and neck with it. Hair that suddenly removed me from the realm of cute and illicited compliments of ‘beautiful, or heavens to mercatroid! ‘hot’ and even ‘sexy’. I felt transformed.

Cutting my hair back into the short hair cut I realized does not just make me frustrated that now I actually have to style it each day vs. putting it up when I need to be out the door quickly or like the average suburban housewife, it feels like I just killed a part of me that was very vital. I don’t see the woman I’ve become in the mirror right now. I see the girl who fought so hard to get away from so much pain and misery. I don’t like that too much, it reminds me of too many hard times.

What can I say? As pathetic as this may all sound, because I know it is just hair and it will grow back, I guess I really am like Tony Manero, “I work really hard on my hair.”

But Katie Holmes and Suri Cruise?

You have some competition.

Now if I can only get it to look that good each day…