'I Got A Bob Haircut, And It Was The Biggest Mistake Of My Life'
There are several stages of grief a person goes through when mourning the elected loss of their hair to a bob. The first is shock; staring at one's reflection while at the hair salon is never for the faint of heart, but doing it with 70% of your hair scattered on the floor? A truly emotionally scarring experience. The second is grief; for all that you had with the lengths you begrudged and now will inevitably spend years growing back, and the third is regret; a deep-seated remorse that lodges itself into your very core for months. Yes, you thought a bob was a good idea, but you were, in fact, deeply and sorely mistaken.
How did I come to be so familiar with the grief that accompanies going for 'the chop'? I, as those who have gone before me have done, chopped my hair off before I flipped my life upside down, ended my three-and-a-half year relationship, quit my job and moved house, all within a week.
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My life at the time had become crowded with complications; emotional and spiritual. I felt a nagging from somewhere within to change anything and everything in order to feel anchored to something. Never one to do things by halves, I opted for the latter and detonated the life — and hair — I'd spent years learning to love. The haircut took place on a Wednesday and my life as I knew it was over by the Saturday. Overwhelm has nothing on the emotional intensity that dominated that period of my life. Compounding the matter? The fact that, clouded by torment, I had cut my shoulder-length hair to align with my jaw.
What came next were some difficult months, if only for the fact that I looked like I had a helmet of hair strapped to my head at all hours of the day. The helmet I had paid a far-from-humble amount of money for was unavoidable; it greeted me in the morning when I looked in the mirror, the reflection of it bid me goodnight when I turned to switch my bedside lamp. It was a reflection of my inner turmoil, a permanent reminder that my old life no longer existed and neither did my lovely, long, flowing hair. I became plagued with what I've now (dramatically) coined as 'Post-Traumatic Bob Disorder'.
What I thought would be a fun embrace of the new era I was entering instead became a near-constant reflection of how deeply sad and confused I felt. Rather than look at my bob and see a new and somehow changed version of myself, I saw someone in desperate need of comfort and familiarity.
The growing-out process was far from instantaneous — it took a lot of patience, perseverance and Hershesons' Almost Everything Cream — but eventually, like my new life, my bob grew, before it changed into something else entirely. Eventually, it started resembling something I liked far more than how I felt in the aftermath of the cut. I fell in love again, found another job at a publication I'd long dreamed of writing for and bought an apartment of my own. Today, the bob that I hated has grown (albeit at a glacial pace) to a long bob (otherwise known as a 'lob') and now sits at my collarbone to frame my face.
It was only when I recently went for a blow-dry at my favourite salon, that I admired a reflection in the mirror. It took a while for me to realise that the beaming face I was looking at was my own, the same reflection that just months earlier I had almost cried upon seeing. My advice to those looking to change their haircut (subsequent life changes are optional) is to think seriously about whether it is a bob that you need, or something else entirely. It's nice to dream of looking like Hailey Bieber and her glazed chocolatey hair, or Gisele and her newly-modelled chin-scraping lengths, but bobs are not to be taken lightly. They are, sadly, not something that are right for everybody, and fortune in the bob stakes doesn't always favour the brave. For those, however, who have been in the depths of PTBD only to recover, remember that, like life, hair can grow and morph into something else entirely. Everything is subject to change, bad chin-length and helmet-like bobs included.
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