this little light of mine, part 1
if there's one type of show i would most want to be studio audience to - apart from oprah's christmas giving away goodies special - it's her makeover shows. i don't even have to know the people getting made over to cheer with the best of them. i get so swept up in the project, screaming, often sobbing when the person steps out from behind the curtain looking all shy and excited and occasionally even working it - my favorite - in the midst of all that applause and oprah going, oh ma gawd!
makeover shows make me cry harder than any others because i know how powerful it can be to hand someone a new perspective on themselves. it's not easy to fully comprehend how profoundly life-changing a new haircut or better-fitting bra can be. you have to be there. you have to have gotten rid of a habit that like linus' security blanket has followed you around for years and that you don't need any longer. i really do think our defense mechanisms sometimes manifest themselves most stubbornly in how we wear our hair, clothes, makeup. so a makeover can make you feel naked and raw.
when i cut off my hair some years ago, it got the worst response from the world. except for friends, people mostly just gasped and said, what happened to your hair! like it had been in an accident or something. and i would say, it's shorter, that's all.
but that was not all. suddenly i did not have this mass of stuff on my head to carry around and watch out for. i did not have to plait it and washing my hair wasn't such a production. we're talking radical shift here - it went from brushing my hip to tickling my neck. my mother would look at it wonderingly everyday and go, wow it's so short.
as for me, i knew in the flash of my hairdresser's scissors that i would never ever grow my hair again. ever. it was a homecoming.
but you don't have to have chopped off your hair and broken your mother's heart to understand how this feels. any old fashion revelation will do. it has the liberating effect of ripping off a corset. and tearing it to shreds. and burning it and dancing around the fire and jiggling in released glee. to realise you don't need all those layers of cloth. to see you look pretty damn alright in a sleeveless top. to understand that pink looks good on you, so stop fighting it, people.
makeover shows make me cry harder than any others because i know how powerful it can be to hand someone a new perspective on themselves. it's not easy to fully comprehend how profoundly life-changing a new haircut or better-fitting bra can be. you have to be there. you have to have gotten rid of a habit that like linus' security blanket has followed you around for years and that you don't need any longer. i really do think our defense mechanisms sometimes manifest themselves most stubbornly in how we wear our hair, clothes, makeup. so a makeover can make you feel naked and raw.
when i cut off my hair some years ago, it got the worst response from the world. except for friends, people mostly just gasped and said, what happened to your hair! like it had been in an accident or something. and i would say, it's shorter, that's all.
but that was not all. suddenly i did not have this mass of stuff on my head to carry around and watch out for. i did not have to plait it and washing my hair wasn't such a production. we're talking radical shift here - it went from brushing my hip to tickling my neck. my mother would look at it wonderingly everyday and go, wow it's so short.
as for me, i knew in the flash of my hairdresser's scissors that i would never ever grow my hair again. ever. it was a homecoming.
but you don't have to have chopped off your hair and broken your mother's heart to understand how this feels. any old fashion revelation will do. it has the liberating effect of ripping off a corset. and tearing it to shreds. and burning it and dancing around the fire and jiggling in released glee. to realise you don't need all those layers of cloth. to see you look pretty damn alright in a sleeveless top. to understand that pink looks good on you, so stop fighting it, people.
posted by Deepa at 12:08 PM
2 Comments:
Exactly what I did an year ago. Chopped off just what my Mum thought made me beautiful. She still frets when I go home. As happy as I am to be able to wash my hair every morning, when I see other women streaming fingers down a shiny mane for a good minute, I feel a little heavy inside.
aww you have the pangs. that's not so nice then. but look at it like this, compared to those rapunzels, you are at zero risk when it comes to table fans and other impromptu hairstylists :)
Post a Comment
<< Home