‘A Pixie Cut Is Hair Prison - Here's What I Learned From Getting The Chop'
Here’s the thing about growing out a pixie, there are only two options, you either choose the mullet route or you choose graduate bob. And both must pass through a Princess Diana stage. There is no skipping this bit unless you like the gel look and are willing to wear a hard helmet of hair for five months.
A pixie cut is hair prison. I should know, I’ve been locked up for just over a year.
It's a prison many of us enter voluntarily. Secretly we all want to know if there’s a Mia Farrow waiting behind those curtains. But for every Mia there’s a Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell. The hairdresser runs their shaver up the back of your head, and what you hope they find is 2010 Emma Watson but instead there is every chance they’ll uncover Weird Barbie.
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My partner campaigned for my pixie, I’d catch him looking at me curiously as I ate granola in the morning and when I said ‘what?’ through a mouthful of seeds he’d say, ‘You should cut your hair’. He told me in the car, he told me whenever he saw a picture of Michelle Williams, he told me after sex.
But I was scared. When I first cut my hair into a bob after years of it reaching for my nipples, a male friend responded to an Instagram picture saying, ‘No, why’d you cut it? I think of you as a sheet of blonde hair.’
The truth was that for almost my whole life I too had thought of myself as a sheet of blonde hair. I allowed so much of who I was – and how I felt - to fall around my shoulders. And society kind of encouraged this; with beauty standards what they were in my twenties, you were halfway to attractive if you had long hair. It didn’t matter what I was wearing, if I wore my hair down it guaranteed some kind of male attention, and I guess for a time, that mattered.
As I got older, I understood how reductive this was. When a trusted – and snippy - friend saw a picture of me in a group of women, all with long hair she responded with, ‘urgh all that hair, it’s so needy.’ I started to see my hair as, well, a bit basic.
So, I cut it.
And just like that the word ‘tuft’ entered my daily vocabulary.
Fast forward a year and here I am in hair prison reflecting on my decisions. Because after the initial high, I regretted it, and I blamed my partner. I think the hair cut coincided with a moment of hormone instability, but instead of recognising that, every mood swing became about The Hair.
I didn’t know who I was to the world. How did I present in a room? At least when I had hair that parted at the side and had some kind of relationship with my shoulders, I felt I knew how people perceived me.
At work I’d be talking to a customer and an intense feeling of exposure would wash over me and I’d want to quietly crawl under the table. Compliments from my partner felt like pinches – I didn’t want to be reminded that anything was different.
Crying on the phone to my sister she caught herself from saying ‘I told you so,’ and instead said, ‘we all do it…once’. She was the only one who had told me not to do it, my friends were suspiciously encouraging.
Everyone comments on it. It’s an awkward kind of attention, like entering a work meeting eight months pregnant. People tell me it looks great. But, and shoot me for this observation, no one has copied me. My three-year-old daughter’s favourite game is ‘Mummies with the long hair’. She’ll pretend flick her hair over her shoulders and say, ‘let’s play Mummies with the long hair’. And so, I flick invisible hair.
I wanted to believe my partners compliments, but every photo taken of me I wanted to burn, I was wearing a sailor’s hat on zoom and my bed-head hair was certifiable.
After one too many coffees where I talked about The Hair, a friend got me onto How to Grow Out Your Pixie on TikTok. This is social media’s true sisterhood. It’s a thriving content stream of women from all over the world working through that miserable stage where it’s more animal than human, and doing God’s work by documenting it on a daily basis.
Buoyed by their courage, I started the grow out.
You know what happened? My hair grew into the cut I was always meant to have. A longer, fringier version of the good old short-back-and-sides. Right now, I’ve chosen to stick with short hair. I like how it looks with a white vest. How it sets off a floaty dress. It allows for obnoxious earrings. And my daughter calls it, ‘circle hair’, and how can I not encourage that?
In some ways the maintenance is easier - I air dry now. But that also means there are about four hours of the day when I can't be seen and the hair cannot be touched. Cuts are crucial but the most expensive thing is the colour. And with short hair it has to be just right; there's no hiding it in a messy bun.
I was hoping to get through this article without using the word ‘journey’, so instead I’ll say ‘headfuck’. Cutting my hair has been the biggest headfuck. It’s had me turning my identity over, it’s made me realise I never really knew what people thought of me. And you know what? I’d do it all again. Because I also felt brave, and it unstuck me somewhat.
But it’s possible I’m saying that because I’m yet to do the full grow out. The bit I’m most scared of is when you have to let the hair grow over the ears. Maybe ask me then if I’m still glad I cut it.
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