The weather in France may be crappy at the moment, but I still have hopes for warmer days this summer, and so I got my hair cut very short again to prevent it from weighing against my neck in two weeks, when the hairdressing school clothes for two months. (Yes, I know I’m cheap, I can’t afford to go to a real salon these days, or rather, I prefer put my spare money into a gym membership.)
And this, as usual, led me to think to other things, and in turn made my mind focus on the matter of haircuts and clothing when one is overweight.
To be honest, I’ve wanted to have short hair for a long, long time. I remember I had them short when I was 10 or so, but then I imagined it didn’t ’suit me’ because my face was all pudgy with baby fat. So I wore them long for the next eight years or so, and my face remained pudgy because the baby fat turned to just plain old fat, and I still was fat anyway. But long hair were a pain. I never had the committment to take care of them properly. They were always tangled, gathered in crappy ponytails to keep them out of the way, and they sure didn’t make me look thinner anyway. I tried dying them black, which turned out nicely and actually made them look better, but it took me being 18 years old and moving away to another town for my studies to finally find the courage to cut them. Which didn’t last long, because barely two years later, I started letting them grow long again.
And why, will you ask me? Because I’ve been always told that “short hair will make your face look fatter”. When you’re a teenager, you kind of believe those things, don’t you?
But here’s the gist of it, really, that took me years to understand: when you’re overweight, anything will make you look fat. Plain and simple. We can fiddle along with vertical lines and black clothes and shiny big jewelry and colorful scarves and belts and carefully planned haircuts, the truth is that (unless maybe our ‘fat’ is only a few extra pounds and we’re lucky enough to carry it in a less unflattering way), it won’t fool a damn soul on Earth. Sure, people may think that we know how to dress and have good tastes in clothes, but we’ll be fat all the same. At best, we’ll appear a couple of pounds lighter, which isn’t such a big deal when 40 or 60 or 80 more remain to shed, or so it seems to me.
Frankly, is it really worth bothering about those things when it doesn’t change much in the end? So what if long hair actually made me look older and more tired and more depserate than ever, I shouldn’t have had short hair because I’d have looked fat? Well, newsline: yes, I was fat. And somehow, I feel like all those mantras, all those do’s and don’ts of the Fat Girl Fashion Diktat are meant less to help us, than to help other people imagine we are not here, or blend more easily in that shadow in the corner, you know, being all dressed in black and browns and dark greys.
Riiight.
I got rid of my long hair at the end of 2004. I was very close to my heaviest then. It was the winter, it was cold, but I was sad and desperate and not knowing what to do with myself anymore, and cutting them was my promise to that crying inner girl that I would try to do what it’d take to improve my life, in whatever way that would be. I don’t know if cutting anything was the answer, but it was strong enough a symbol to help me (also, my ex liked me with long hair, but I didn’t like me at all, and so this was really a “ME” moment).
And my hair has remained short since then, because I just prefer it that way, and it’s more convenient at the gym orwhen it’s hot, nor does it take half a hour to comb in the morning. Moreover, I don’t have to be bothered by hair gathered in a thick braid in my neck at night in fear of never being able to untangle it again come the morning.
Now I’d appreciate having my hair cut short even more if I wasn’t still finding tiny, tiny bits of hair everywhere in my clothes. There is something slightly disturbing in the revelation that whatever manages to get stuck in a G-string must necessarily brush against parts that definitely do not need more hair.
June 28th, 2007 at 18:07
I just cut my a few days ago, way shorter than it’s been for the last couple years. It was sort of an accident–went into a new stylist for a “trim” and she just kept going. But I’m really happy with it, as it feels more like “me.”
No one really liked my recent experiment with longer hair, but as I’d had short hair most of my life I was ready to try something different for a bit.
And so now the experiment is over and I’m back to my “real” self.
For me the issues have been more around androgyny/femininity than around weight. (Short hair has always seemed important to my sense of identity; I was always a tomboy growing up and never really dropped it for the girly thing).
But as you point out, it’s fascinating how much something as seemingly trivial as hairstyle can affect us! Glad you’ve found the cut you’re happy with.
June 30th, 2007 at 06:37
Ah, I love the short cut. Funny, the shorter I go, the more girly I feel, weird. Which is odd considering everyone around me thought I would just look totally butch. I sometimes feel like people can see ME better. I just go in circles, I get it pixified then grow it out, then cut it all off again. For me, LOW maintenance is king. Reading this post just makes me want to go cut all off again! The one thing that irks me about the super short cut, is the maintenance required to KEEP it short. I’m just too lazy, I let it grow, then curse the in-between stage.
OH, and I can’t totally sympathize with the tiny bits of hair! But aren’t long hairs grosser? lol!
June 30th, 2007 at 13:31
I’ve never felt ‘not feminine’ with short hair. But I also have a tendency to let it grow a tad bit too long, and then be annoyed with it–although I suspect it’s more because I don’t have enough money to go to the hairdresser every 3-4 weeks. I hope I will be able to keep that maintenance cost, at leasy.
Long hair ARE grosser, indeed. Especially when your boyfriend finds your 50 cm-long hair tangled in HIS underwear. ROFL