A dramatic haircut is legendary for changing your mood, but who knew it could change the way you feel about your body? In this month’s “Life with the Girls,” Suzan Colón had to let go of her hair to regain the sense of control she had been missing.
I have a friend who used to patiently listen to me complain about one thing after another. When I was finally done, she’d say, “But the important thing is, your hair looks great.”
My hair has always been one of my most noticeable features. When I was little, that mass of dark waves almost overwhelmed my face, and certainly overwhelmed my Mom when she tried to detangle me every night. As I got older, I grew to like my big, wild hair; it was boho, it had personality, and it equalized my figure, evening out my full hips and small breasts.
This past summer, my feelings about my hair, and myself, changed drastically. A work project ran into problems I could not fix. A family member had a health crisis, and I began making trips, two hours each way, to visit. The weather got hotter, and as the heat index rose, so did my hair’s frizz index. I was somewhere in between a chic spring bob and my usual shoulder-length hair, so I couldn’t tie it back. Heaps of waves sat on my head like an overheated sheepdog, getting in my eyes, refusing to be styled and generally driving me crazy. Each morning, after trying and failing to make my hair look presentable, I’d sigh and slouch in defeat, my breasts almost hidden in the posture of despair.
My husband was the one who suggested I cut my hair off. He’d found an old photo of me with a pixie cut, which I had gotten after a poorly done bob. In the picture, taken during a far calmer summer years ago, I was sitting tall and smiling widely. I looked balanced. I looked happy. I looked like me.