I have had numerous haircuts, styles, beard lengths, types of beards etc. If anything the rate of significant change has increased. It has been rare for me to have particular look and maintain that image for longer than 6 months and certainly not longer than a year. My wife, similarly, has started to fluctuate hair colour with mood and season. While certainly for myself my lack of hair maintenance, is related to my distaste for maintenance of all kinds. Therefore, I usually have a beard due to disinterest in shaving rather than my love of beard. However, keeping that in mind it is also true that I rarely change "because it was time," although this will often be how I will express it if people ask why... "because it was time" is the equivalent of saying, "you are human you know that sometimes things need to happen and I may or may not be sure of why and even if I am, I am not willing to share specific reasons." I have noted in myself and others a tendency to cut, colour or in some fashion change their hair as a way to exert control over there own life. Often we are battered about by circumstance and situations, either in reality or perception, beyond our control... addressing our hair can serve a number of functions in these circumstances 1) It is a way to exert control and feel power 2) It is a way to externalize or incarnate inner feelings and life in a variety of ways...either parallel or contradictory.
I once shaved off my beard and shared a devotional Bible reading about hiding. While, I would argue primarily I am too disinterested to shave, there are other elements of both hiding and also the assertion of age and with it power that are also wrapped up in my beard. Sometimes one or both of these aspects becomes psycologically problematic and I have to shave off my beard. In another example, I cut off my spectacular shampoo commercial worthy long hair last semester (as can be seen on the About Us page). (The picture is from the summer, let me assure you that it only got better and I was literally a lion among men). Anyway, I cut it off, by myself, the day after Occupy Wall Street got raided and kicked out of Zucotti park; it was a form of lament.I also use hair cut and beard adjustment as a way of marking time. I will often shave either at the beginning or end of semester, paper, project or some other sort of season.
I had dreadlocks for a year, which effectively expressed my desire to surf and generally be a hippie. That was a good year: I got out surfing a lot and also bought a 1971 VW bus. I do not believe I have been surfing since I cut off my dreadlocks... Which I did after one day of out door manual labour, pulling up sod... Clearly I sold out to the man.So, how does your hair express who you are? what you want? what has happened or is happening? Do you make these changes with intention or reflexively?
I believe that this is very much a modern phenomena... I have nothing in particular to support that... Do you agree or disagree? What are the underlying social causes for this phenomena?
Is our hair most often an outward expression of inner reality or is it equally common that our hair creates and participates in our inner reality?
Excellent. I am an intentional hair cutter. Example, I am currently sporting a mustache, a choice I make for the winter season, specifically for skiing purposes. I cut this one as a "good luck stash" before going to support my brother in Whistler at the deep winter photo challenge. I decided to keep it, and consequently skied three weeks in a row. There is something special about having a powder stash or a place for a snotsicle on a cold winter day in the mountains.
ReplyDeleteWhy? Because I can. Because the "ideal" clean shaven, trimmed to perfection projection of "man" our culture has grates me. So I have a hideous mustache to align myself with a ski/snowboard culture, that in many ways is truer to who I want to be than the life I currently live.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Okq8xHrIZ8I&ob=av2e
Oooh! What a great question and topic. Makes the sociology nerd in me want to do a study about this. There are so many factors that come into play when it comes to hair...when we observe people and their hairstyles as we see them so many times each day, our minds do not typically begin to sort out what things must contribute to the choice they've made to have the particular cut, colour, or style that they've chosen.
ReplyDeleteA haircut represents so many unsaid words. I love it. And pretty serious about researching this at some point.
I have had the same hair colour forever. Never dyed it. Wait...highlights in grade seven. For 'grad.' But other than that, nothing. Mostly, I like my hair colour, and I'm lucky because it changes without me having to do anything. Gets significantly blonder in the summertime.
More recently, my choice to not dye my hair has to do with the amount of money it requires, and the sick amount of money the "beauty" industry gets from people changing their already beautiful hear. Eighty bucks for a new colour? No thanks, I can't even afford school.
When it comes to my physical appearance I'm a pretty secure and content girl. So besides a few subtle changes in length here and there, I've kept it simple, and without much change. Something that's socially super common, easy, and very practical for being pretty active and working at a pool.
Although I say it hasn't changed much, I keep it at a length that gives me the freedom to style however I want...which I now am seeing as one of the main reasons I like keeping it longer. Not that I ever style it that much. Hm. Interesting.
A few weeks ago I got a haircut, and got bangs for the first time since I was about seven years old. For me, a big change in the hair department. It was definitely a physical change that was reflecting an inward sort of renewal. I wonder how often my haircuts have reflected something internal without really being conscious of it. Because this time I definitely was. Again, interesting.
I think I'll begin my preliminary research by having some good conversations when my friends change their hair.
Thanks for provoking some neat thoughts Duncan.
I think more often than not my haircuts come out of the fact that it's just been too long since the last time and I can't deny the mullet anymore.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there are three distinct times that I can remember cutting my hair as an act of catharsis. It often ends up being really short because there is something about the physical act of cutting away hair as a statement against 'yesterday's self'. Saying that even though everything's messed up, you don't have to be seen as the same person you were the day before. It's freeing in a physical way to have the hair gone from your head, even if nothing else has really changed.