At the start of my freshman year, I made the mistake of getting a new, “edgy” haircut. One night before a sorority dinner with my pledge sisters, I checked my hair in the mirror and felt like a faded pastel sweater in the back of a dusty closet. My hair was boring as shit. Sure my hair was long, thick, and envied by the dry-haired girls on campus, but I didn’t feel especially sexy. I wanted to look like a hard hippie bitch who lives under the boardwalk in the summer, letting the sand fall from beneath people’s sandals, through the wooden cracks and into her hair. I wanted blood and rebellion and to flood the world with waterfalls of patriarchal tears and for boys like Drake to want me so bad– all of this from one haircut. So I told my friend Marcia, a fabulously grungy hair fashionista who shares the same hair stylist as Megan Fox, what I wanted and asked if she could cut it for me. I told her to chop off my princess locks and turn me into an acid popping version of Brooke Shields from Blue Lagoon who could be fittingly seen at either a bougie nightclub in New York or at a homeless youth shelter in Hawaii with everyone holding hands around a bonfire, singing inspirational Christian rock.
“After I cut your hair, you’re gonna look so hot. 100% swipe right. Trust me,” said Marcia with a slow, seductive wink. And I did.
I sat down in Marcia’s room, subject to her nimble working hands with a fresh white table cloth draped over me. Time passed slowly as we watched an old episode of Hannah Montana and wondered whatever the hell happened to the Jonas Brothers. “Miley and Nick should have gotten married. They’re like the perfect Disney couple,” said one of my pledge sisters. “What the hell? You’re so corny, Diandra; Miley is queen and Nick is boring,” retorted Marcia. I laughed at that but started to grow anxious without a mirror to monitor Marcia’s work. Finally, Marcia asked “Is this okay?” as we walked to the bathroom mirror. I shrieked and cupped my hands over my mouth. Then I shrieked again for an extended period of time. My long brown hair was butchered into short curly stubs that resembled poop larvae while random patches of hair were missing from my head. On the sides, some pieces were so thinned and far apart that my hair looked like dried cactus needles. My breath came in painfully quick gasps. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry! You don’t like it?” The rest of my pledge sisters came in and gasped with eyes more shocked than mine. “Girl, you bald!” one of them said, smacking her legs and laughing out loud. Marcia turned to me and kept saying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cut it so short.” Hot tears began to well in my eyes. I wanted to smack all of them in the face, so I left the room.
When the laughter died down and they saw that I was hurt, they followed me and someone suggested trying a curling iron to make the hair lie down a bit. Desperate to remedy this colossal fail, I tried this but realized that my hair was too short to even fit around the curlers. I started to tear up again, frustrated by all the absurdity, but ended up laughing my head off. After trying out all the possible solutions and eventually damaging my hair even more, I decided to wear a cute hat every time I stepped out; fortunately, it was winter and I would only wear it long enough for my hair to grow back. Even though I’m still friends with Marcia and shade her at every appropriate occasion, I never let that hipster wannabe fuck with my shit again.
Nikko Espina