If you meet someone one way and hit it off, and then the next time you see them they look considerably different, would you second-guess giving them the time of day?
You guessed it. We’re having the tired hair conversation. But alas, hair, and how long or short it is, is still very important to very many people. Including men.
A friend of mine was in a relationship for years with a guy who didn’t make her feel good about herself. Yes, we should all be able to uplift and love ourselves, but what the hell is the point of a relationship if your partner-in-crime goes out of their way to make you self-conscious? This lack of support was most evident near the end of their time together. She made the decision to cut her hair off. It was something she used to do now and then when she felt like she needed to start over with her hair once it started breaking and having a mind of its own. It wasn’t something she’d done while with her boyfriend, but they had been together for a couple of years and she didn’t think it would be a problem.
But it was.
When she showed off her very short haircut, he didn’t have a lot to say. He didn’t diss or dismiss it; he just didn’t throw out an “It looks good, babe!” Instead, he nodded and smiled saying, “If you like it…”
But as some time passed and her hair looked less and less like what the salon put together for that initial cut, he became more and more rude. “You’re going to go out like that?” That’s what he asked her as she prepared to run errands one morning, curls doing their own thing after a twist-out failed to pop. Such insults would continue to the point where my friend started wearing her weekend wigs more and more. Once the relationship ended, it seemed less likely that she was wearing those wigs for convenience and more so that she was rocking them because he had knocked her self-esteem down a few notches. She even assumed that another guy she met while out with her wig on started losing interest in her when she met up with him for a first date with her short hair exposed. All of a sudden he wasn’t available to meet up for a second outing and just wanted to be “cool” despite obvious sparks flying when they initially came across one another and conversed.
She’s not the only person who has dealt with a man having a less than delighted response to a major hair change. A woman in the comment section of an article I came across on hair and patriarchy said she had been planning to lock her hair for months before finally setting up an appointment. She just so happened to meet a guy before her appointment and at the time, her hair was in a simple topknot. A topknot she had been wearing damn near every day. They hit it off and were supposed to go on a date, but he got sick, so they rescheduled–for the weekend after she was scheduled for her hair appointment. She admitted that she was a little nervous about how he would react to her hair change, but when it was all said and done, “I didn’t really care.”
When they met up on that date, she said, “to say he was shocked is an understatement.” There she stood with her tiny twists. Hair that probably could have reached the top of her shoulder was now barely at her ear. And while the sight of her with seemingly half of the hair she had before was jarring, he eventually stopped staring at her head long enough to get to know her. She says that months later, they’re still dating. She still has her locs, but he has a different attitude toward them.
And that’s probably because he had to ask himself whether or not hair was really that deep. Was it worth going MIA over after truly hitting it off with this young woman? Was he that superficial? Well, I’m sure he didn’t want her to figure that out too soon.
I get it. If I met a guy with a beard that literally drew me (and drew drool out of my mouth) and then he went and cut it off soon after, I would probably be a little sad too. Hell, I’m sad every time my fiancé shaves his beard for work. But at the end of the day, all that surface stuff means a whole lot of nothin’ in the long run. When you’re just looking for someone to roll around in the sheets with then I guess it’s understandable that someone would “get out of dodge” over a major hair change. But when you’re looking for something deeper, who cares? And for women worried about these things in the early stages of dating, you don’t know a person well enough to give a damn about what they think, especially when it comes to the decisions you want to make for yourself. Don’t be scared to do the things you’ve wanted just to please someone you don’t know from Adam. Because if he can’t get with it, he’s free to get lost…
But as always, that’s just my opinion. What do you think? If someone drastically changes their outward appearance after you meet them, is it petty to feel some type of way about it?
