Challenging the Conscious Self Image Norms With a DIY Haircut

My culture demands long hair for a girl to look good but shouldn’t I be the one to decide what makes me beautiful?

At age five, I learned women are supposed to have long hair. Throughout my youth, society kept reminding me that it was the true mark of femininity.

Over the centuries, traditions and customs have equated long hair with a woman being docile and fertile — qualities which a ‘good’ Indian woman is supposed to possess. This notion is linked with the idea that if a domestic woman has enough leisure time, she can spend it in grooming and taking care of her long tresses.

If a woman’s hair is so intricately interwoven with her femininity and her attractiveness to men, what does it take for her to cut it short?

The Indian society is still deeply patriarchal. The rules of society function within strict gender roles where men are the bread-earners and women stay at home, taking care of the children and household chores. Since they aren’t expected to earn, women have ample time and are expected to take care of their looks and clothes.

Wherever you look — be it television, movies, or beauty pageants — no woman considered beautiful has hair that isn’t well past her shoulders. If a female character in a movie has short hair, she is stereotyped either as a mouthy tomboy or someone who places her career first and doesn’t have a family. Short-haired women are rarely shown as mothers or love interests. TheyDone. are always in the side-lines — important enough to push the plot forward, but never integral to it.

The message is subtle but so clear, one would have to be blind to be oblivious to it: you are not beautiful if you have short hair.

This can be terribly damaging to the mindset of women of all ages, who might subconsciously start attaching their sense of self-worth to their looks and their looks to their long hair.

As Adhuna Akhtar, the founder and creative director of the BBLUNT chain of beauty salons and hair products quoted in an interview, women enter their salons and say they would like a hairstyle that’s new and exciting. But then, they immediately follow it up with “I want to keep the length.” Akhtar says she wishes she could convince every woman in the country to walk into a salon, ask for the beauticians to cut her hair short, and dance out feeling liberated.

If a woman’s hair is so intricately interwoven with her femininity and her attractiveness to men, what does it take for her to cut it short?

I have never been much of a fan of long hair. However, bowing down to societal pressure and the insistence of my mother, I had kept my hair at least at chest level all my life.

However, owing to the pandemic-induced closure of all beauty salons, I haven’t had a haircut since December 2019. My hair had grown too long and had started looking dry, falling limply to my chest without framing my face. In my frustration, I decided to cut a fringe, so at least, the front of my hair would look good.

But, when I held the pair of scissors, I had an urge to chop all my hair off. It would be so freeing, I thought. I would no longer have to spend so much time in front of the mirror applying conditioning serum or detangling my tresses with a comb.

In an instant, I heard my mother’s voice inside my head, “Don’t do it! Women only look good with long hair.”

Even if I could shut this up by insisting that my hair was getting damaged as it had gone without trimming for so long, my mother’s voice inside my head would argue again, “At least go to a salon. You could ruin your hair using that pair of scissors yourself. Who does something so rash? Women always go to beauty parlours and have proper haircuts.”

I had no counter to this. I felt defeated at having something I wanted so badly snatched out of my grasp. I remembered several of my male friends boasting how they had mastered the art of self-haircuts over the course of the pandemic.

“Men have so much freedom,” I thought wistfully, wishing I could do the same.

Then, a more rational part of my brain questioned: why is something as basic as cutting one’s own hair assigned to gender?

If men can do it, so can everyone else.

And so, I didn’t stop at the fringe. I cut my hair all the way, chopping off three or four inches in one go.

Yes, I broke the unwritten rules the world had conditioned me into abiding by all my life. Not only did I cut my hair short, but I also cut it off on my own. It no longer looked perfect or salon-fresh.

I am aware that there might be many who look at my hair now and say the new haircut looks ugly and unprofessional.

But, in a weird way, this new hairstyle makes me feel empowered and happy. I am so proud of myself that I could break free from the shackles tying me down since childhood, and do something for myself that I really wanted.

Why should you let other people decide what’s ugly?

This got me thinking and I came to the pertinent question: since when has “looking good” been more important than “feeling good”?

As women, we are conditioned to believe that our body is an ornament, existing primarily to pleasure men. It is high time that we reclaimed control over our bodies and stopped adhering to “rules” that do nothing but demean us and take our freedom away.

If you feel great with long hair, you should keep it that way. But if short hair is what makes you feel confident, nothing should stop you from going ahead and chopping it all off. There is no need to “look beautiful” at all times as long as you treat everyone around you with kindness.

This body belongs to you. All the decisions pertaining to parts of your body should belong to you as well.

Why should you let other people decide what’s ugly?

As a woman, I am tired of letting the world tell me what’s good for me and what’s not. In my twenty-seven years of life, if there is one thing I have learned, it is this: you carve your own destiny.

If you are capable of making decisions related to your career and family on your own, you should have the freedom to choose how you look as well.

If you feel beautiful, no one else has the right to judge your body, rate your looks, and tell you anything otherwise.

It’s your hair and you should define your own beautiful.