I buzzed all my hair off

My eleventh grade English teacher once told me the true way to address someone who has had their hair cut is not “Did you get a haircut?” but “I really like your haircut”. I’ve always remembered that, and still to this day address people as such. Isn’t it weird though how as a culture, some things we do with our hair and body are still so taboo. If not taboo, but that as a society, we need a good reason to justify someone else making a decision that we wouldn’t necessarily make.

Two Saturday's ago I had my hair all buzzed off. 

I’m not going into this post riding on my feminist, non label giving high horse here, because before I did it, I was SCARED. Like for real. I sat on the living room floor, jittering my legs waiting for my nails to dry knowing when they did I was going into the bathroom with the clippers and there was no going back. 

But I’m honestly ashamed of that fear. I’m sad that society has affected me in such a way that a haircut would dictate my emotions that dramatically. And it didn’t end there. The next morning walking into church I was pretty freaking nervous. I was wondering if the congregation would think the pastors wife had a “Britney moment” over the weekend and was now clinically insane. 

And since I did it I have been asked the same question in different forms over and over again. 

“What made you want to do that?”

Have you ever honestly been asked that when you’ve had a haircut? Have you ever gotten a few inches cut off and had someone say “What made you want to do that?”. Even when I went from long hair to a pixie cut I was never asked that.

It doesn’t bother me because it offends me personally, and that I’m sad people might not “like it”. What bothers me is that as a woman, people still have the idea that I can’t have the same haircut as a man without a reason behind it. There has to be a reason behind why I did it. 

“Am I still having trouble with my hair falling out?”

“Does one of my friends have cancer?”

“Is this some sort of statement?”

“Are you planning on keeping it like that?”

Like.. no. And I don’t know, maybe? 

I did it for the same reason I have cut my hair into a million different styles. Because I wanted to. I wanted to know what it would feel like to have a buzzed head, simply for the fact that I’ve never had one before.

It’s pretty liberating to be honest. There’s nothing to hide behind. That idea of breaking the “typical standard” is an empowering feeling. Life is too short to not be yourself. Even if its in the little things like cutting your hair, or dressing a certain way. Or in the big things like coming out to your family and friends, or talking about your faith with a stranger.

Freedom to express yourself should not be limited to social norms. It’s not about staying inside the box of what a mom, pastors wife, adult, woman, should be doing to express herself, or that defeats the purpose. What people decide to do with their body, their hair, is truly an individual choice. And as a woman, I shouldn’t have to feel like I need to justify those decisions. I am my own person, we are all individuals and unique. 

So whenever someone asks me why am I doing something that maybe makes me seem different than what I am expected to be, the only thing I'm going to say to them is 

because I wanted to.

And if any of you are wondering how my husband feels about it...

he’s the one who did it for me. And he loves it 😉