Don't bend

It is one of the most commented upon articles in New York Times online history. And it is no coincidence that the pen was long time friend and supporter of Blushing Hostess, New York Times contributor, author of Slow Love Life, and former House and Garden editor, Dominique Browning. Those who read Dominique, as I hope you do, know her grace is as fearless and meaningful as her pen.

When, on October 21, 2010, this byline - Fear of Flying a Long Flag of Rebellion - was published it seemed clear a storm was coming. It is the great unsaid thing among women: You will cut your hair as you age. It has something to do with seriousness and how whimsy is expected to appear on novelty sweaters from Talbots with honking big appliqued apples, but not, on your head.



I was thirty-four when, for reasons I had honed for a solid two days, I had my hair cut madly short, for me, anyhow. I had new babies. I was exhausted. It was summer in Florida. I was thirty-four for God's sake and practically dead or so the part-partum illogical thought pattern went. Anyway, Stevie - who always sported a bleached or blue pixie, took it off in long strands - just blond wisps everywhere. I watched it hit the floor with no emotion. It was time. But if, at any other time in my life I had seen my hair about me in hacked piles, I would have swooned.

It wasn't me. It was a mistake. I also am not honey medium brown in hair color and I don't care for curls. Also not me. But I have had to learn all that on the way to this place.



Once it was gone, other signs of my multi-faceted identity remained because you cannot hide from who you really are with the help of a shear.

Above is my hair as it was this summer when Nick revised my tattoo (calm down, haters). One small piece of ink, but that too figures into me - and an identity I adore. It is not at all an identity that was dictated and doesn't mean (to reiterate) that I don't know how to set a table, iron linens, or where the guest of honor's wife can pull up a chair at dinner, okay? They are just puzzle pieces, they don't mean I don't pray.

Life is so much more complicated than hair and ink, but it all builds a spectacular and singular whole. If you can just get up the nerve and time to go with it...

A month before I had my hair cut off, I sat in that same chair before Stevie and we listened to the woman in her mid-forties next to me explain that she needed to have hair like Kate Hudson's in color. She also couldn't cut it because her husband liked her best and was most affectionate towards her when it was long. Stevie and I both cringed: If he loves you, then he loves you. Who cares about your hair?

Screw him, we said to each other over a glass of wine later on. Because we - however unrealistic this may be in truth in some lives - believe that love sees no hair color or cut. And that we choose the style. Because, look, it will always inherently tie back to the woman herself, and consequently, to the girl he fell in love with, no?

So, I pick the poison. I'm platinum, and it is long and a little edgy at times. Not just because that is how I like to keep my hair but also because that's what you get. I don't like my hair to tell lies for me. I'm not sporting a bob and headbands, I want to keep it real. It's far more comfortable.

Dominique, by the same token, is doing the same at fifty-five years old. I am proud of her, but this is only one small reason. She took her stand, in the New York Times no less.

I capitulated to whatever sense society and exhaustion could be mashed together to make to settle on a decision about my hair while a child kept me up all night and our world took some pretty fast and harrowing turns. I've been on the mend ever since.



More or less, as you can see now, I'm there. I am also still kind of exhausted as you also note, but that is another thing altogether.

I'm keeping longish hair.

I've got your back, be fearless. Cut if you want to, but not because social more's flattened your resolve to maintain it. And not because someone else prefers it another way. Do it because you want to see someone you recognize in the mirror. And because she is beautiful that way.