Five Haircuts

One (1993-ish)

I’m maybe 10 years old, in the near corner chair at Carol’s Hair Express in Chesterton, Indiana. Carol’s is in a familiar strip mall, the one that houses the Jewel-Osco and the Little Caesar’s and the laundromat we went to in those early Indiana days before the washer and dryer got hooked up. Carol’s is where I get all my haircuts now. Occasionally I hear of other kids in town whose mothers cut their hair for them, which makes these visits to Carol’s seem all the more glamorous. I love to look through the huge catalogs of styles they have in the waiting area — looking through catalogs is one of my favorite only-child pastimes — so that’s probably where I got the idea for the feathered bangs. Either that, or the woman cutting my hair suggested it. My eyes meet my mother’s in the mirror, her own hair freshly cut. She gives me a daring smirk: “why not?” I allow the young stylist to feather my bangs. Whatever that means.

Feathered bangs are a disaster. They don’t make any sense on their own, and while my mother still carefully brushes my hair every day and salves it with VO5, neither of us is interested in adding hairspray to the equation. My mother feels a bit guilty for the grief the allowed feathered bangs have caused me. But a bad haircut is a rite of passage, after all. This one was another nail in the hairstyle coffin; before long, me and the bangs I’d had since kindergarten would call it quits for good.

Two (2002)

College, for me, mostly feels like teetering on a sky-high tightrope. If I look up, it’s just the rushing air of pure, new freedom. If I look down, there’s that cavernous, netless abyss. My new friend Mary, more than anyone, is my balancing pole. She keeps my head up just by following her own interests and taking me along for the ride. She must be the one who gets us taking the L uptown to get student discounts on haircuts at Milio’s. Goth, punk, drag, rave, hippy — name the aesthetic and someone doing hair at Milio’s is rocking it. To me, this feels like the urbane, unapologetically offbeat adulthood I’d barely dared to dream of back in Chesterton.

For the first time, I meet a stylist (Kai) who will be “MY GUY,” a specific individual who I will seek out and return to, who I will actually enjoy talking to during my haircuts. He will remember me, compliment me, ask me about my life in vague, easy-to-discuss ways. It’s a joy to let him snip my hair into long layers, to let him take care of me in a way that I cannot seem to take care of myself…even if the (discounted!) price tag of this experience makes me queasy every time.

Three (2006)

I think I’m in Schererville, Indiana. I have always thought of this as “the town near the mall,” but now it’s the place where Kristynn, one of my closest back-home friends, is studying cosmetology. She has decided to dye my hair blonde. Not platinum, nor the sort-of-maybe-blonde it is naturally, but an actual and undeniable blonde. I’m sure I was involved in this decision at some point. Despite my now-official status as a working city girl, I have never been as edgy or adventurous as Kris. Changing my hair color by a few shades is barely any kind of rebellion at all, she needs the practice, and I’m getting a big discount, so how can I say no?

Our paths into adulthood have diverged somewhat, so it’s a treat to have this extended time together. And it extends and extends. The first color application does nothing. The second one is barely noticeable. My long hair sucks down this color treatment like spilled Sprite on shag carpeting. But eventually, I emerge, blonder than ever before. To perfect my new look, I am given “a big blowout.” I have to ask what this means; it sounds invasive. But no, it just means my stubbornly wavy locks will be blow-dried smooth and sleek.

I usually keep my long hair piled on top of my head; when we leave the school, my new cascade of blonde locks feels fun costume. Kristynn picks and tsks at stray waves all evening, frustrated that her hard work isn’t sticking, that no amount of heat or product can keep my hair perfectly straight. She’s right; it’s bittersweet, this fleeting, false beauty. The color, the texture will fade, even as our small-town teenage intimacy is fading. I try to enjoy it while it lasts.

Four (2015)

Life in Los Angeles is expensive, and everyone I know seems to think it’s normal to pay hundred(s?) of dollars for a good cut and/or color. In my hip neighborhood, I could easily spend that much by accident. Any place near work would be even worse (I work in Beverly Hills). But then this fun warehouse of a salon opens on Sunset, and they advertise the prices on a mural wall outside. I think I can swing it.

I keep up an awkward but well-meaning conversation with the stylist, or hair artist, or whatever they call them here. I give her the quick-and-dirty backstory of my hair: it does what it wants; I am at its whim; don’t try to comb it, use a brush; I’ve had long hair my whole life, I don’t have a sensitive head, so yank as hard as you want; etc. She asks me what kind of shampoo and conditioner I use and is alarmed when I am not exactly sure. But through all this (or maybe because of it) she somehow understands not only how my hair should be cut, but also what I need to do to it at home to make it work for me.

At 31, I’ve finally learned just how curly my hair is, and how good it can look if I don’t fight it. It’s a revelation.

Five (2021)

While I wasn’t looking, the warehouse salon has changed owners and paint jobs (inside and out). I’ve changed jobs too, more than once, since the last time I got my hair cut.

What I missed most was having my hair washed. The smell of expensive shampoo, the heat of the water on my scalp, the meditative bliss of letting someone else take care of something that I have to do myself any other day of the year. My stylist introduces herself as Krista, but we don’t chat during the haircut beyond exchanging a few scant words of agreement on what she’ll be doing to my hair. She tells me she won't have time to blow dry it; no problem — it looks better air-dried anyway. She asks how much shorter I want it, and I tell her that I don’t really want it to be shorter, but accept that it must be. I haven’t had a haircut since late November of 2019; she’s got my permission to cut off anything that needs to go.

Krista parts my clean, wet hair down the middle, and in the mirror I look just like I did at 15 (except for the mask). I smile, thinking how today’s 15 year olds have gone all-in on the same center part that I left behind in 1998. It’s strange to be old enough to have a thought like that.

The comb gets caught on the loops of my mask, but I don’t mind — the masks are essentially a formality now, and I can adjust mine without feeling anxious, which is exactly why I waited so long. I was waiting for it to feel okay again. Now that it does, the lack of banal chatter lends an air of ceremony to the proceedings. A holy rite, this haircut. After a year where I was rarely seen, I am ushered back into the world of the visible.

I’m rarely trying to shake things up at the salon; instead, I tend to return to a follicular status-quo. Because I’m rarely making a change, I don’t remember many of my haircuts with any specificity. The ones I do recall fall into two categories: the ones I remember because of how they made me look, and the ones I remember because of how they made me feel. This is the latter.

Before long, it’s over. My hair is several inches shorter, but as with all but a handful of haircuts in my life, no one will notice the difference. I don’t look much different. But I do feel different. This one, I will remember.