{"id":379,"date":"2008-01-04T15:25:45","date_gmt":"2008-01-04T19:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sarahdopp.com\/blog\/?p=379"},"modified":"2017-08-22T05:50:36","modified_gmt":"2017-08-22T12:50:36","slug":"so-whats-up-with-the-haircut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/2008\/so-whats-up-with-the-haircut\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;So&#8230; what&#8217;s up with the haircut?&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"juiz-outdated-message jodpm-top\">Heads up, this content is 18 years old. Please keep its age in mind while reading.<\/div><p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/01\/haircut4.jpg\" alt=\"haircut4.jpg\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"5\" vspace=\"5\" \/>I get this question a lot. It&#8217;s the &#8220;hipper&#8221; way of asking, &#8220;<strong>Why do you have your ha<\/strong><strong>ir like that?<\/strong>&#8221; (which I also get a lot), and the masked way of saying, &#8220;<strong>Your hair confuses me and makes me uncomfortable. Explain yourself.<\/strong>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t mind talking about my hair. I do mind having to respond to spoken judgment from strangers. Preferred variations of this conversations starter include, &#8220;<strong>That haircut looks easy to take care of<\/strong>,&#8221; &#8220;<strong>I bet your head is cold<\/strong>,&#8221; or (my personal favorite), &#8220;<strong>I love your hair!<\/strong>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The other really common one I get is, &#8220;<strong>You have a really nicely shaped head. I could never have that haircut because my head is too lumpy and dented.<\/strong>&#8221; Don&#8217;t laugh&#8211;this is serious! I get this <em>more often than any other comment<\/em>, <em>hands down,<\/em> even from strangers passing me on the street. Sometimes it&#8217;s sounds generous and sometimes it sounds like they&#8217;re uncomfortably grasping for something to say. Completely depends on the tone of voice.<\/p>\n<p><strong>But back to &#8220;So&#8230; what&#8217;s up with the haircut?&#8221; <\/strong>I&#8217;ve accumulated quite a few answers to this question over my last two years of relative baldness, and I&#8217;d like to share a few of them with you. <em>Most<\/em> of these are true:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a great conversation piece.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t like hair.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I was really angry one day while giving myself a haircut, and I accidentally cut too close to the scalp &#8212; so the only way to even it out was to shave it. I wasn&#8217;t working in an office at the time, so I figured it didn&#8217;t matter much. But then I got so many compliments on it that I just had to keep it.&#8221; <em>[note: this is actually how it all started.]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The shorter my hair is, the more free I feel.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>[dumb look] &#8220;What do you mean?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It helps people remember me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I like to spend my time and money on things that matter more to me than my hair.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Rubbing it brings me good luck.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I look terrible with hair.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I got tired of people hitting on me.&#8221; <em>[note: the haircut does not actually fix this problem]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a social experiment. I like to see which kinds of people feel the need to comment on it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Ooh, I love this game! I&#8217;m a militant nazi skinhead man-hating lesbian buddhist monk with cancer! Now you tell me about <em>your<\/em> haircut!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It shows people I have nothing to hide.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Oh I&#8217;m from San Francisco.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It changes the assumptions people make about me as a consultant in the tech industry. I&#8217;m more likely to be seen as brazen and cutting-edge and less likely to be talked down to as a <em>young woman<\/em>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Oh, thank you for noticing! I paid $300 to have this done by a famous hairdresser in LA. Do you like it?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a great haircut. I&#8217;d been listening to men brag about it for years. They were absolutely right.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Does it make you uncomfortable?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Wigs are a hassle.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s part of my personal brand.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I like it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"border-radius: 2px; text-indent: 20px; width: auto; padding: 0px 4px 0px 0px; text-align: center; font: bold 11px\/20px 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; color: #ffffff; background: #bd081c  no-repeat scroll 3px 50% \/ 14px 14px; position: absolute; opacity: 1; z-index: 8675309; display: none; cursor: pointer; top: 41px; left: 613px;\">Save<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Heads up, this content is 18 years old. Please keep its age in mind while reading.I get this question a lot. It&#8217;s the &#8220;hipper&#8221; way of asking, &#8220;Why do you have your hair like that?&#8221; (which I also get a lot), and the masked way of saying, &#8220;Your hair confuses me and makes me uncomfortable. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[104,223,226],"class_list":["post-379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-hair","tag-brand","tag-my-hair","tag-my-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2754,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions\/2754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}