"Did You Have To Do That?"

A Woman's Hair and how ANY PART of its existence is NONE of your business

Here’s what I normally look like. She said, “Smile,” so I did. She made me sit in the exact chair for the exact lighting she wanted. Daughters are special. I’m now old enough to know what I want and what I care about. In earlier years, that wasn’t necessarily so.

I remember those years, what I did, and what I wished I had done…

“So did you have to do that?” he asked.

We were outside, working through the final items of the renovation of a massive three-apartment beach house my husband and I had purchased after closing our company. Basically, we were finding something for me to do while my husband learned to sail. While I didn’t want to go back to work renting apartments, I also didn't want to sit at home reading or twiddling my thumbs. My writing had not weasled itself under my skin just yet. Thus, the beach house.

I was pleased with my new haircut when I left the salon. I’d avoided a very short cut until later in life, as my mother had demanded I keep it short in elementary school. From grades 1 to 4, my teachers during the first week of each year all thought I was a boy. Since then, I kept it long.

Until one day in 2013, I decided to cut it short. Very short.

“Do you have a medical reason that it’s so short?” the electrician continued, his face twisting into a horrified expression, “like cancer?”

That question floored me. Seriously?

“No, I don’t have cancer,” I replied. “I just wanted to try something new.” I let out an exasperated sigh, closed the car door, and stomped up the front stairs into the old barn-like house. Dropping my purse on my desk in the front office, I headed for the kitchen.

“Oh, my God. What did you do?” This was my husband’s standard reply when I went to the hair salon, even though most of the time he could never tell what I’d had done. It was always blonde, highlighted, and long. This time, however, he gaped at me like a large-mouthed bass.

“You don’t like it?” I did a pirouette.

“You look like your mother.”

No, that wasn’t a compliment. I strode to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. What I thought had been a revolutionary idea for me, a kind of freedom, and the change I was looking for, was rapidly turning into a disaster. But for whom?

Not me.

In fact, as I studied my face surrounded by the short cap of hair, I realized that I hadn’t gone far enough. The next morning, I disappeared back to the hair salon without telling anyone where I was going. This time, I shocked even the stylist.

“I want it one inch long all over and bleached white,” I told her. “Not light blonde, not gray, but very, very white.”

“Are you sure? This is Charleston, remember?”

“Exactly. Because this is Charleston, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let the city, my friends, or my family shove me into a box like this. And besides, it will grow. Why do you care? It’s job security for you.”

The result? Spectacular.

The reaction? It shut them up.

The retrospection? My choices are mine, not theirs. Either get on board or get out of the way. Don’t take me for granted, don’t put me in a box. And if you don’t like how I look? Keep it to yourself.

Only if, in the end, I’d been strong enough to do this.