Don't look - my hair's invisible

The queen of the unnoticeable haircut, that's me.

I'm not good about going and doing pretty things for myself, probably because in my mind it still qualifies as an errand, and I hate errands. But I have known for quite some time that I needed a haircut, especially since the whole greasy, stringy, hospital hair fiasco.

But guess what? I like long hair; I like long, straight hair on me. Oh, yes, it's boring, unadventurous, and, no, I don't blow-dry it or style it or put any kind of texturizing, root-lifting, or shine-inducing product in it 99% of the time. My hair is stick-straight and unstyled but healthy. I have never dyed any part of it in my 33 years.

Some of you are sad for me. I feel it.

Worse in your minds, I'm sure, will be my confession that I make my husband trim my hair, since it is so straight and long. Yet, the time had come to pay a professional a princely sum to chop off the split ends and shape it nicely, and so I did.

But I quoted the wrong number. I said four to five inches, and the stylist heard six to seven. It didn't look like much when I held my locks up between my fingers. Maybe it's because my normally shiny hair looked so dull and dirt-brown in that salon mirror. Maybe I was feeling daring, because I had just refused highlights when every woman I know had advised me to try them. While leaping off the bandwagon of high-maintenance coloring, I tripped down the stairs of shorter-than-I-wanted discontent while getting chatty with my hairdresser.

When I got home my husband acknowledged that it was shorter than he would have liked, but he said it looked like it was professionally cut.

No one else noticed. Not one person today looked at me twice, speculating on that fresh look, that change. I took off at least five inches, people! My hair is layered to frame my face, and dammit! It's shorter by half!

I'm the Queen of the Unnoticeable Haircut, and I've known it for years. Each major haircut there are no compliments, no exclamations of, "Did you cut your hair? I like it!" My hair could grow to my feet and then a mad man could cut it off while racing through a public park with a pair of scissors. As he loped away cackling, my friends would all rush to my side and exclaim, "Hillary, are you alright?! What did he do to you?" I would point to my hair desperately, and they would all stare back with blank, uncomprehending faces until I told them to never mind.

I should have gotten those highlights.

I should have gotten my brows plucked, too.



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