"I LOVE YOUR HAIR. Don't you just love it?"
and then as people get to know me, the question that almost always comes up is:
"Has your hair always been short?"
The responses to each of these questions respectively is "Thank you and yes it's the best thing I've ever done" and "No." It kind of blows my mind to think that there are people in my life who have never known me with long hair. It's strange how my short hair has become a part of who I am. When I cut it, I wrote a blogpost titled "It's just hair." But to be honest, it's always been more.
I realized at a pretty young age that my hair was my greatest asset. It was a beautiful color, it was fine and broke easily. My mom always kept it at my shoulders and had me count my brush strokes when I brushed it every night. It was my main point of vanity until I started putting it in ponytails as I got older. That was an attempt to hide it I think. Or I just stop caring because in middle school, I didn't think I'd ever be pretty so why try...
In high school, things changed a little bit. It became my greatest asset again. I loved my hair again, that was cool. But no one ever noticed it. It's not like it had a lot of power over people or that it made all the boys drop at my feet. It was just there.
Soccer was where hair really counted. That ponytail is a symbol of status. Working for the soccer team at BYU, I have noticed a lot about female soccer players, and in turn, myself. But hair is an important part of that. The way each girl does her hair expresses individuality and seriousness of play. It just means something. I don't know if I can fully describe it. But trust me.
Being on stage, hair becomes extremely important. And this is an example of the ridiculousness I use to put myself through. But it's true. Whether you're acting or dancing, your hair is there and it changes things. I went and saw a dance performance last week. And I realized the importance of having long hair to put into perfect buns as a ballerina and beautiful up-do's as ballroom dancers. You notice when a woman is on stage with short hair.
This post is already getting long, but recently, a coworker and I were discussing how much we love our short hair and that although we pretend we cut our hair for ease. We also cut our hair to make a statement. My statement was particularly directed toward an idiot boy who said that girls were no longer attractive once they had short hair. And the statement is that as beautiful as long hair is, sometimes, a girl can really rock short hair and it can be beautiful just as much. This isn't a plea, by any means, for every girl to cut their hair short.
This is just a plea for you to do what you want and to be happy.
