a confession

Friends, I have defied a cultural norm. I have broken a taboo. There is an impulse which most of us have felt as children, and many of us indulged it-- but when we did, we found out quickly, from the shock and anger our mothers expressed, that it is NOT DONE. Shame and disgrace were poured out upon the innocent, experimenting child, and the lesson took root: in a decent, civilized society, people do not cut their own hair.

So swiftly was the social shame invoked that most of us never even asked why. To take scissors to one's own hair was FORBIDDEN, and that was all the child needed to know. As mother fusses and frets, trying desperately to cover up the great gap and the too-blunt ends where a hand more bold than skillful has severed a lock or two... as she shakes her head and clicks her teeth and worries aloud that she may have to shear the whole head to make it even, the prohibition is burned into the child's soul. What, exactly, the calamity consists of is unclear, but children are constrained by many such reasonless disasters.

It is necessary that it be so: but should not we, as thinking adults, look at the matter with a more lucid appraisal? It is for us to assess the validity of the prohibitions we accepted as children. Some we will approve and uphold without further experiment: "Don't put your hand on that stove!" Some we will modify into an appropriate form for adulthood: "Don't talk to strangers!" Some we will test and see for ourselves what the alleged dire consequences really consist of. Various primal urges will be indulged in, in a more or less infantile way, until we reach our own understanding of good boundaries and self-imposed constraints.

But of all these primal urges, one that gets relatively little press time is the urge to cut hair. I myself did not recognize until recently what a powerful and vital impulse it still is. The taboos imposed in childhood are strong; it generally takes a fair amount of external encouragement even to recognize them, let alone to break through them. So that, among the many taboos whose breaking has become fashionable, a subtler and less publicized prohibition remains as entrenched as ever.

It began, for me, about two months after I first got my hair cut short (by, of course, a qualified professional.) I had been for one trim, by another qualified professional, and it was getting shaggy again. They had warned me about this: Short hair needs to be maintained, they said. You'll need to get it trimmed every four to six weeks. And I found, crinkling my nose every morning at too-long wisps of hair down my neck, that they were right.

I hate appointments. I strive, as much as possible, to keep my life to a small, routine circle of activities: even an enjoyable break in routine, like a concert or a day trip somewhere, is met with some reluctance. Tedious and compulsory breaks in routine are worse, and to be eliminated wherever possible. And even more than appointments I hate these little, eternally repeating chores, these things which never stay done but must be done over and over, at regular intervals (e.g., bed-making, which I usually eschew, and tooth-brushing, which I usually succumb to.) And here I had introduced into my life the tedious, compulsory, eternally repeating chore, of going to get my hair cut. Gah.

So as I stared at myself in the mirror, these few offending wisps (only a few... most of it was quite acceptable), my mind railed in frustration that I would be compelled to make an appointment over such a small problem. And then, furtively, the image of a pair of scissors in the other room crept into my mind. Could I not just attend to these wisps myself, and put off the trouble of an appointment for another couple of weeks?

NO! the childhood prohibition boomed. We do not cut our own hair! That is work for trained experts! You don't have the education for that! For a moment, the thought of cutting my own hair seemed as wrong-headed as performing my own appendectomy. But then reason reasserted itself. It's only hair, after all. What's the worst that can happen?

I got the scissors. And with the first snip, a new freedom flooded through me. This was not some esoteric art, to be practiced only by the initiate. This was hair, and making it shorter. I could do this. I had the technology.

I stuck to my plan of just trimming the scraggly edges, but the thought of those scissors haunted me. Could I not do more? Could I not maintain my own haircut, without any professional help at all? It was only scissors and hair. How hard could it be?

I was timid at first. I picked an evening when I would be free the next day, to have the ravages repaired by a professional if necessary. I used a bathroom in my parents' house, where the arrangement of mirrors allows you to see yourself from just about every angle imaginable. I cut sparingly, conservatively. The result was favorable: there was barely a difference, only it was tidier than it had been. The success of this effort gave me boldness in subsequent essays. I bought a comb and a large hand-mirror. I began keeping my little vacuum cleaner in the bathroom to tidy up. I found that the more I cut, the more I wanted to cut. It had, at moments, the power of an addiction. I would have to firmly tell myself, "Lay down the scissors. Step away from the mirror."

I am still trying to analyze the peculiar enthrallment. It has its root, I think, in the simple experimental urge: "What happens if I do this?" It appeals to both curiosity and power: I have learned something, and I have made something happen. Fascinating. Let's try it again. Anyone who has spent time in the company of infants can see how primitive and basic this urge and appeal is.

Atop the appeal of experimentation, there are overtones of image and identity. I have never liked walking out of a hair salon feeling like my head had become someone else's sculpture. I don't care if you tell me it looks great. It is my hair, not some medium for modern art. My first desire, on returning from a hair salon, is usually to frantically wash and brush until it has started to look like my hair again. In the past, I told myself this was because I was uncomfortable having a fashionable or put-together image, had some pathological aversion to looking like I was trying to be stylish. But can one not as easily put the opposite spin on it? If I don't want to look like a magazine picture, why should I have to? Is there some rule saying that women must be designed and coordinated? And if there is, why am I trying to obey it?

This is a debate that cycles over and over for me. I oscillate between declaring that I want to develop a "style" for myself, and declaring that I don't care how I look. Neither is strictly true, and whether I will ever settle the matter remains to be seen. Meanwhile, I have begun cutting my own hair. And some days (today, for example) it looks like it. And I don't much mind. If my chief object, hair-wise, was to look great, I'd hire someone to do it. But there are things I want more: I want time, I want freedom, I want self-determination and the fun of experiment. And I want the play of scissors in my hand, the clean decisive snip, and the soft dark tufts falling into the bathroom sink.