A Perfect Cut

My beau and I got our haircut yesterday – yes, apparently we do everything together. The last time we got our haircut, we did it together as well.

I have been wearing my hair short for the last three years, even though I used to have it long past my shoulder, but since I came back overseas I found that I couldn’t handle the humidity in Jakarta and so after gradually going shorter from past-shoulder length to shoulder length (which only lasted for 6 months, mind you), I ended up with the shortest length in which I called it the Miranda cut.

And just in case you don’t know which Miranda I’m talking about, it’s the cynical corporate lawyer from Sex and the City. The reason why I honored the cut with such description was because no matter what instructions or image referrals I had given to the hairdressers, they always ended up giving me the masculine, lawyer-type hairstyle which definitely looked good on her, but didn’t do justice on me, because she happens to have an oval shaped, high cheek-boned face whereas I have this round, chubby face that make me look like I have permanent baby fat.

But the Miranda cut always grow on me – day by day as I look at myself in the mirror I hear myself thinking, “Aye, not bad, not bad at all,” posing this way and that and tweaking the fringe a bit more with a hair wax and at the end of the day feeling hopeless because instead of the hair looking messy-sexy (as Miranda’s would), it goes flat and limpy  – so not sexy at all!

If that isn’t bad enough, people around me seem a tad bit too eager in telling me how fugly I have become whenever I got my hair cut.

“Why did you get a haircut again? You look even less of a girl now.” Gee, thanks.

“Oh my God, what happened to your head? You know, from your legs up you might look like a girl (I happened to paint my toenails that day) but from the waist up, no one can tell what gender you are (chuckle, chuckle, chuckle)” – this actually came from my manager at work whose face looked like a butchered pig.

“Why don’t you grow your hair longer, at least up to your shoulder, you know? Then you won’t look so … macho.” which make me feel like I’ve grown Arnold biceps.

But I love my hair short – it’s one of the things that define me as the person I am – practical and simple. I know I will never have the time to do my hair everyday, as I’m the get up and go sort of person who rarely touches the hairdryer that even my dog gets blow-dried more often than I do.

And even if I tend to ignore what others say about me, they kind of get to me too, especially on bad hair days when my hair doesn’t want to behave.

So it’s amazing to find out that the only person who loves my hair short is my beau. When every other person in the world tells me how terrible my haircut makes me look, he instead tells me that I look so much cuter and age five years younger, and that makes me realize, time and time again, that he’s the only person who sees me the way I want to see myself.

So haul along the Miranda cut, I’m up for it!