You’re at home. You walk by a mirror. Hey, look at those bangs. They look a little… long? Well, maybe not long. But surely they could be shorter? Yes, maybe a couple millimeters. Then they would be perfect. You sit back down, but you can’t get the thought out of your head. Maybe you’ll look better. And the maybe you’ll feel better. And then everything will get better. The sun will come out. Handsome men will respectfully interact with you. Plague will subside. Capitalism will be abolished. Scotland will gain independence.
Does this line of thought seem familiar? Probably not, as I don’t know anyone who considers the hair at the front of their head to control aspects of the universe. And enough people are right now thinking “Bangs? You mean fringe? Bangs sounds ridiculous.” Yeah, okay but when I hear “fringe” all I think is:
or maybe sometimes this:
Let’s just all agree there is no proper word for them in the English language.
As Dionne describes Cher’s affinity to give people makeovers from the classic film Clueless: “it gives her a sense of control in a world full of chaos.” And right now, bangs are all I have. I’m past the want to dye my hair different colors and dealing with that upkeep. Same with short hairstyles. I don’t go anywhere to wear makeup, and I’m pretty minimalist if I ever do. I can’t afford/get tattoos during a plague.
What I can do is blunt-cut my bangs very short. A lot.
Sometimes I cut them really short and wait months to cut them again. Sometimes I cut them to exactly where I want and then have to cut them again just weeks later. But I always, always, always not only think I look better when I do it, but I feel better. It just feels like I’m doing something? Accomplishing something? Putting good out into the world?
No, I’m just cutting tiny pieces of hair off the front of my head. But it does feel good. Fresh cut bangs give me a little squirt of dopamine, and who doesn’t need as many squirts of dopamine as they can get nowadays?
This was true before I spent 11 months without a hug hiding in the French countryside during a plague. I’ve dabbled in not having bangs. Sometimes for whole years. Those were bad times. Times with my enormous forehead and weirdo temple cowlick visually terrorizing anyone who gazed upon me. But it was never for too, too long. The bangs always come back. The bangs are comfort. The bangs are home.
I could blame my mother. But she’s dead, and also today is her birthday so that seems kind of rude. I can never ask why she cut my bangs as a child. Was it the fashion at the time? Did she, too, fear the size of my forehead? I will never know. Do I feel better with bangs because it’s what I was conditioned to have as a child? Or do I objectively look better with them?
What trick of the brain says BANGS = GOOD, SHORTER BANGS = MORE GOOD?
I don’t even have decent eyebrows to show off. I have the curse of blonde eyebrows which end up looking spotty due to half the hairs being super light. If I want to look fully human, I have to color them in a bit. If I could just let my bangs cover them a bit, I would not have this problem. But the eyebrows are the tipping point where my whole face goes from lovely to monstrous* the minute my hair grows over them.
(*monstrous according to my own perception of my face. Your perception of my face would most likely not change at all, if you even ever looked at or thought about my face for any number of seconds, which, why would you?)
The fact is, no one on the whole entire Earth gives a metaphorical shit about the hair covering part of my forehead. Well, there’s a few but they’re those weird dudes that go around telling women what they should look like on the internet according to their weird, fascist-ingrained ideals of “women” which for some reason considers bangs to be the style choice equivalent of kicking a sad, scared man in the genitals.
Which really only makes having bangs more appealing.
Cut your bangs, piss of your local misogynists. Or sometimes even global misogynists.
My bangs are a connection to my past, a constant reminder of the passage of time, a way to feel refreshed and groomed, and a way to piss of gross dudes all at the same time. Perhaps no one has put this much thought or meaning into hiding their forehead, and perhaps no one ever will again. Perhaps I have taken navel-gazing (which I just wrote as nazel-gaving, and I now own that word, that’s my word) to a weird level. Forehead level. Wait, would that mean my belly button would be on my forehead. That’s not a thing. Though I would absolutely have bangs if I had a belly button on my forehead.
