hair. and women. and salad.

i've blogged about hair before.

my last post about hair was... ah... angsty.

this one isn't going to be angsty, i promise. and if it is, you can find me and throw a pie in my face.

(i've always secretly wanted to get pied in the face. is that weird? probably. moving on.)

so my mother has been seeing the same hairdresser, this nice lady named cheryl, since the dawn of time. i mean, since before she met my dad. so like, a really long time. longer than my parents' marriage.

cheryl's really cool. her hair is always wild and she's always super incredibly loud, and even though my mother and i pay her with our credit cards every single time we get our hair cut, she can never figure out how to work the credit card machine.

i started seeing cheryl when i was in ninth grade because i was sick of sitting awkwardly at great clips and anxiously waiting for one of the stylists to notice that i had trichotillomania. because that's always fun.

i generally let cheryl do whatever she wants with my hair. sometimes this has turned out wonderful, and once it turned out absolutely disastrous, but i pretended that it was a super cute haircut that i absolutely loved.

but seriously. the back of my hair was long, kind of mullet-like, and the top of it was short and i was supposed to awkwardly poof it up at the back of my head. and there was something weird going on with my bangs. it was just awkward for everyone involved. and i mean everyone. i think it might've made my dad uncomfortable.

anyway, cheryl has this big appointment book and after my hair appointments, when she's figured out how to swipe my credit card and i figure out how to tip her on the receipt, she opens the big book, plants her hands on her hips and says, "six weeks, babe?"

i'm not sure why she calls me babe. like, i've always envisioned having this incredibly hot boyfriend that would call me babe and he would be all tanned and shirtless and really into hot tubbing, but i got stuck with cheryl calling me that.

six weeks is a good schedule, because even though my hair doesn't grow long, it grows quickly. then i did this weird thing called college where i moved to michigan, and suddenly it was like, only getting my hair cut in october, december, and february. which kind of sucked.

this past february, i had my latest hair appointment, and cheryl decided that since it was getting longer, we were going to keep it that way. which was cool, because i was digging it being longer. so she figured out how to swipe my card, i tipped her, and she planted her hands on her hips and said, "six weeks, babe?"

then it was all bending over her calendar and being like, "okay so graduation is here and then i leave for england here and i'm gone for a whole month" and she was like, "well during that one week that you're home i'm on vacation."

ooops.

guess who was going to have really long hair in england? me.

if you know me well, you know that i have a hairspray addiction. i believe this thoroughly comes from years of hating my hair that is generally trichotillomania induced, and i absolutely have to do my hair all the time. like, i can't leave the house or my dorm without it done. even when i roll out of bed five minutes before class, i will spray my hair and run.

it's a bit excessive. my roommate used to choke and gag when i would do my hair. my mother makes fun of me when i come downstairs in the morning, trailing a cloud of hairspray behind me.

i really love hairspray. and i only use one particular kind.

when i was attempting to pack for england, i grabbed a bright, shiny, new can of hairspray. and i might've cuddled it. and in my head, i was saying something like, oh mighty hairspray can, you shall make my hair look so beautiful in the motherland! 

i was also tempted to raise it toward the ceiling and start singing circle of life, but my mom was in the room. the lion king was also already on my eighties TV.

after flying overnight to england, landing in manchester to awkward piano scores of "set fire to the rain" (trust me, i will be blogging about that incident) and taking a coach (that's british for bus) to york, we checked into a hostel. i didn't shower all day that day, or change clothes, because i was in ENGLAND and i wanted to explore ENGLAND and get over my jetlag in ENGLAND.

the next morning i got up early, got in our tiny hostel shower, used katie's shampoo because i hadn't bought any yet to save room in my suitcase, and then i put on some decent clothes, went outside to the mirror, and cracked open my new bottle of hairspray that had flown with me to the land of my dreams.

cracked as in literally cracked. the lid was in pieces. i sprayed it.

it dribbled. and made a whining sound.

oh. shit.

i panicked. i seriously did. at seven thirty in the morning in the hallway of a hostel in york, england. and i was like, HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO SURVIVE THE ENTIRE MONTH WITHOUT HAIRSPRAY?! WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?! MYYY HAIRSPRAYYYY NOOOOOOOOO 

erin told me not to fret. it was going to be fine. i told myself that and i let it dribble all over my hair (and consequently all down my neck) and i managed to get some semblance of what my hair normally looks like, and then i was like, i'll just buy new bottle at a convenient store.

guess which country doesn't sell my type of hairspray?

yep. ENGLAND.

the longer my hair gets, and by the end of my month in england it was pretty long, the more hairspray it takes to achieve what i want my hairspray to achieve. during my last week in london i was dripping hairspray into my hair from that broken bottle for a good ten minutes. and wiping it off of my neck. and sometimes getting it on my shirt.

hairspray dries without a stain, by the way. thank goodness for that.

when i got back to the states last thursday, i opened up a new can of hairspray and my mother alerted me that i had an appointment with cheryl on friday, the last day of may. and i was excited. mostly because of my hairspray.

but during my entire month in england in which i awkwardly dripped liquid hairspray into my hair, i thought about how long my hair had actually gotten. i mean, when it was wet, it was almost to my shoulders! i wanted to cut it. very badly. i wanted to emma watson the way that my friend lisa had. i asked around and everyone was like, no! your hair is so long and nice! keep it!

i thought about my last hair post about patriarchal hair bullshit and i was like, mmm. the patriarchy is strong in this class.

so on friday, i showed up to cheryl's salon and i said, "let's chop all of this off."

AND I DID.

my hair is now officially shorter than my mother's. which is awkward. but kind of nice.

when i posted online that i had chopped off my hair, of course, i was bombarded with "PICTURES! I WANT TO SEE PICTURES!"

so of course i took a really, really awkward picture that reminded me of one of my absolute favourite things: women laughing alone with salad.

women laughing alone with salad is truly a treasure.

here's my "emily laughing alone (possibly with salad) and new short hair" picture. 

i swear to god, if i had any sort of photoshop experience, i would put a gigantic salad in there and caption it, "MY HAIR IS GONE AND I HAVE SALAD, I CAN FINALLY LIVE MY LIFE TO ITS FULL POTENTIAL WITHOUT A HOT, TANNED, SHIRTLESS MAN CALLING ME BABE".

but seriously, women laughing alone with salad is one of my favourite things ever. i want to love life as much as those women love their salads.

so. my hair is gone for the summer. i emma watson-ed, if that's the new term for it. i think my hair looks more like anne hathaway, and i'm down with that, because she's a pretty cool lady and is taking down misogyny.

here's a misogyny shark to end my post about how i chopped off my hair and managed to post pictures of women laughing alone with salad.

this is what i will say to you when you tell me that my hair is too short.