don't knock it till you try it: change your hair, change your life?

My friend Peter took issue with something I wrote in my recent post about self-loathing. (While cataloguing my various defects I made my reference to my "fatally flawed hair--neither curly nor straight".) "You can't say that," he said. "You've got great hair."

Thanks, Peter! The compliment I was fishing for has finally arrived.

But really, I was being sincere when I wrote that. Despite the fact that I have an excellent stylist (hats off to Thea) who thoroughly understands and appreciates the nature of my hair, I have to admit that I spend way too much time obsessing about the topic.

For example, the question of whether or not to cut bangs was one I debated for months. ("What would bangs 'say' about me? Will I morph into a 'Bettie Page girl'? Will I look like a Marianne Faithfull wannabe? Will they make my face look fat?")

Hair length is another subject of endless internal debate. ("Am I not truly a 'short hair' girl? Way cooler guys used to hit on me when I had short hair. What am I trying to prove by growing my hair long? Have I 'gone normal'?")

If I devoted as much time to, say, researching graduate school programs as I do to obsessing about my hair, I'd probably have an advanced degree by now (instead of plans to dye my hair back to its natural dark color, or maybe blue-black...god, I don't know!).

I think part of the deal with the hair is that some of us, no matter how rational we are in other parts of our life, have internalized the belief that changing our hair is a good way to signify some greater, more important life change. Show me a girl with a drastic new haircut and I'll show you a girl who just broke up with her boyfriend.

Likewise, whenever I start thinking about potentially uncomfortable topics ("Is a corporate writing job basically prostitution? How come I barely remember anything I learned in college? Have I squandered my youth?" etc. etc.) I often have the understandably human impulse to squash the feelings of anxiety that rise to the surface. Sometimes I opt for an ocean of wine or a night of panic-stricken insomnia. And sometimes all it takes is a google image search (Milla Jovovich, hair, layers) to keep those troubling thoughts at bay.