My sister stared at me in disbelief, straining to find words
but unable to express her disgust out loud. My mom barely muttered over the
phone, after an excruciating pause, "...why?" My friends flooded my
phone with missed calls and exclamation points and infuriatingly red emojis.
Everyone was in shock, including me. What did I do to deserve this? This
devastation, this discomfort—what did I do that unknowingly forced my loved
ones to step back and sincerely question if they could ever trust me again?
I cut my hair. I cut my fucking hair, and didn't tell them.
A key statute in the Rules of Feminism is Code §4.1: The Permission Clause. This section lists what services and/or products you cannot purchase unless you ask your friends about it first. Don't cut your hair unless your friends have verbally analyzed your face shape, skin tone, blood type, and relationship goals. Don't talk to any boy without asking your friends for their full history with him, including penetrations, interactions, and any other form of dibs. And most importantly, don't ever buy a skirt without asking your friends first if it looks good on you.
These rules are obviously not codified, yet we gals still
treat them as seriously as an eleventh commandment. But these rules, we don't abide
to prevent the wrath of God, we abide to prevent the wrath of a left-out
friend. Think less locusts, more passive-aggression.
Since I am, by definition, a girl, I honestly thought these
negative reactions were because my haircut was really that ugly, and my friends just weren't sure if my personality was pleasant enough to compensate. (It's
not.) However, I later realized this wasn't about looks at all—it was about
trust. Today, "I'm thinking about getting bangs" is right there with
"Do these jeans make me look fat?" in crossing the line from
legitimate concern to being a joke in itself of whiny-girl banality. But we
still blab about these every few weeks, because it's an unspoken assumption
that our friendships depend on it. We consult our friends so much about our
looks, that not consulting them before a major beauty procedure forces them to
think that you consulted with other, cooler, better friends that they somehow
don't know about—because there's no chance on Yoncé's green earth that you
could be trusted to make a decision as critical as this by yourself.
Join me, as we travel to an alternate fantasy universe,
where mosquitoes don't exist and Kali is a lover of glitter and puppies and is
a perfect friend to all. I activate my crystal ball to communicate with each
and every one of my friends (we're in my fantasy universe, remember) and gripe
to them about my Lady Godiva-length hair. It's always tangled, takes forever to
dry, and worst of all—it's just so, blah. They warmly advise me against a
haircut. It could be cute, but you're not Emma Watson. Boys will be
intimidated, turned off. You don't want this. Don't cut it. So I don't. I
continue wasting hours of each day washing, drying, brushing my mane so that I
don't intimidate boys—hours I could’ve been spending galloping around, casting
spells on people, and other fun shit I could breeze through sans six extra inches
of hair.