Day 90.

Written for Pomona's supplemental essay: What do you do for fun?
..I didn't expect to write about hair, it sort of just happened.

I speak from personal experience: there is no better time to cut your own hair than 2 a.m. and no better tool than kitchen scissors. It is oddly freeing--as if when you cut hair, you cut off all the problematic memories you acquired with it, as if all the stress and worry of the past months could just be severed. And it grows back, even if you mangle the back, sides, or front (or all three.) When I was a freshman I cut fourteen inches of hair off by pulling my ponytail to one side, creating a bob about four inches longer on the left than on the right. That lasted for about three months, until my OCD aunt cornered me at a family reunion and reintroduced me to the kitchen scissors, tossing thick chunks of my hair into the grass like it would just be absorbed.
The postcards from my three donations to Locks of Love hang on my wall, but I would lying if I said cutting my hair was purely altruistic. It's also just fun. For one thing, hair is too often a disguise. Protection. Think of long bangs, or the girl who can cover her whole face if she so much as looks at the floor. Short hair forces you to be unflinching. But hair can also be a statement, a declaration--think of the entirety of the movie/musical Hair. And for many people, hair determines gender, which can be entertaining. I thought it was just me, since I am nearsighted, but it turns out that since my last haircut I am consistently referred to as "that nice man over there" in grocery stores. At the school for creative writing I went to last summer, when I attempted a drag-king social experiment, the only double takes I received were for my penciled-in mustache (which I realize in retrospect was overdoing it.)
At one point my hair fell all the way down my back, but over the course of high school it has shrunk to my shoulders, my chin, now my ears, I guess, in a pixie cut: the product of late nights and looking in the mirror hoping to see something new. All of them but the pixie went well-- it's hard to make the back of your head look normal. Only trained professionals should attempt it with professional tools, like my friend Justin with safety scissors when we had an hour to kill before rehearsal and he couldn't deal with my mullet. I love my hair now though--bedhead is infinitely better with short hair. And with gel, short hair is much more versatile. I went from Edward Scissorhands to an extra in the Alejandro video to Zoolander to Rihanna in under five minutes.
I've tried to convince friends to let me cut their hair, but so far no takers. Maybe it's the sort of joy you have to find on your own.

(Alternate last line: But I'm feeling like a change is in order. I'm thinking mohawk.)