To my ladies: ever cut off your own hair as a kid?
And then your mom yelled at you all the way to the hairdresser?
Who subsequently fashioned the top of your head into the tip of a penis?
I was going to hunt down an actual retro-me photo, when I happened upon this near-doppelganger film still of Jim instead. I shitchya not – there’s a photo of me at my childhood home not ten miles away that’s equal parts this, the chubby little boy from the Roseanne, and these clown suits my mom always made me wear. I can’t wait to find it for you. But in the meantime, we’ve got to ask ourselves: why’d I do it?
Mostly, ‘cause I was a destructive little fcck.
So, when my mom sadly admitted out loud one day, “Ah, I don’t have time to cut your bangs before I go to work”, my selective hearing kicked in. Immediately, I thought how shearing my shaggy forehead hair could A.) prove to my mom the “I got this, bish” fact I’d been trying to explain to her since I stepped from her uteral vessel and into the world. And B.) Be a really good outlet for the frustrations of not being allowed to do anything except play in one patch of the driveway, ever (outside of which, rapists and murderers were waiting patiently for me to accidentally cross the imaginary line).
So, I kissed her goodbye.
And I went upstairs.
And I found the scissors.
And proceeded to go Lifetime original on the shiz growing outta my own dome.
Like any psychotic break from reality, I don’t remember much of it – except that I had a good time while it was happening and had a ready made excuse by the time she came home (“We can glue it back on!”). Reflecting on these memories ever so fondly is quite a quaint experience for me. I like it mostly because it reminds me that I’ve always been a little shit – and that it’s not entirely new – just mayhaps it’s been amplified over time. There’s something comforting in that consistency.
More comforting, however, is the fact that not every child is as awful as I was.
In fact, some of them are coif-chopping for the sake of being helpful and altruistic.
Like this little girl who not only performed a follicular sacrifice…
…but also a social one.
All in the name of donating it to a Locks of Love type organization.
Get it, girl. And, yes, I would totally expect the boys to hate on her because she makes a cuter boy as a girl than most natural born boys that age do. We’re all kinda androgynous looking before high school, but she can rock the “either way” cuteness via femme or boyishness (which will serve her well when she ends up a supermodel spokesperson for human rights or whatever in ten years). Plus, the Edie Sedgwick pixie cut never gets old – espesh when you’ve got a cute Charlize-esque face to go with it. More than anything, though – I love how “Kanye shrug” her attitude toward the haters is. Had I had that attitude early on, maybe I wouldn’t have been scalping myself in the bathroom mirror as my mom drove to work.
I’m trying to remember if I ever got teased (my cut was equal parts rug muncher and mushroom.)
If I did, I made it through alright alive. And so will this kid.
Luckily, I feel like she won’t have turned as nutty as I had by the time it grows back.