Au revoir, longs cheveux!

La mujer sigue diciendo "Bye-bye, long hair" when I tell her I want it cut short, down to three inches on the top and even shorter on the sides, like a boy. I had wanted to shake things up and I had heard that a haircut was the easiest way to implement a radical change in one's life. Now, watching my jet-black locks fall away, I had to question the wisdom of such a choice, on two levels:

1. Is a radical change to one's physical appearance really significant enough to effect any real change to the person, the soul? Naturally, this line of questioning had been provoked by my continued reading of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. This is the question pursued in the second part of the novel, "Body and Soul." I won't bore you with too much metaphysical speculation, but I would briefly argue that the appearance of the body can affect not the subject itself, but the subject qua object. However, barring the possibility of our tapping into Hegel's Absolute anytime soon, subject qua object is really the only way a subject can be perceived by another, and therefore this perception indeed becomes important (in varying degrees) to any self-conscious being.

2. Having accepted the idea that this change may be in some way meaningful, will it effect me negatively or positively? As far as I'm concerned the jury is still out on this one, and I know I can't really expect much help from my lovely readers (I don't really look like Lauren Bacall). But in case any of you are wondering what kind of face to attach to my voice, I thought I might describe myself in brief. As I mentioned, I have black hair, along with light, slightly freckled skin and light blue eyes. I like to think the juxtaposition is striking. High cheekbones, pert nose, small mouth, I would call myself pretty, not beautiful. However, I am on the tall side (5'10") and I think my figure is a bit mannish and not nearly as graceful as I would like (hence my fascination with the stars of Hollywood's Golden Age; who could ever hope to make grace look that easy?) and it is this detail that makes me unsure of my new haircut: I've always aimed for a studied femininity in my look to make up for this lack of star quality, and I worry that my little boycut may be more than I can pull off. After all, I'm no Louise Brooks or Anouk Aimée, or even a mere Natalie Portman, and I don't want people to start mistaking me for a lesbian all the time.

But all this is going through my head and at the same time the locks are falling to the ground. I suppose the nice thing about hair is that if I really hate what I do with it, I can always let it grow back (this places it somewhere between clothes and tattoos in the hierarchy of physical adornments). That's why, aunque la mujer ha dicho "bye-bye," yo creo que mejor, au revoir.