Haircuts and Existential Angst

ROSE DIXON-CAMPBELL

Before we get into the meat of this article I do not want to bore you too much in this introduction with the specifics of what is really a very mundane story, so I’ll be brief. I went to the hairdressers for a trim and highlights and when I arrived at the salon the stylist asked me an explosive question:

“What will we be doing with your hair today?” Like I said, I went in simply for a trim and some highlights. However, when she asked me this it struck me that I could request just about anything from this woman and she would carry it out on my hair.

The myriad of possibilities fluttered about in my mind’s eye and a trim and highlights was the most boring and arbitrary option by far. I could go neon green, or fully bald, or I could add extensions going down to my ankles. I could radically change my appearance immediately. I would likely not be unrecognisable after one trip to the hairdressers, but if I wanted to, I could continue with these transformations until I was.

As I sat in that pleather chair staring myself down in the mirror, a head floating above a black smock, I was violently confronted by the level of free will I actually possess over my appearance. There are any number of businesses I could waltz into that could reconfigure my physical presentation. As an adult with a disposable income there is virtually no region of my body which is not modifiable.

Should I so desire I could render myself unrecognisable to my own mother and die with a nearly entirely different body to the one I was born with. I imagine myself as a corpse with a split tongue, implants all over, covered head to toe in tattoos and piercings, some limbs choicely amputated, dyed eyeballs, and big bling surgically installed globally. If in my lifetime I had decided black lungs were fashionable, I would smoke 20 cigarette packs a day to get that chargrilled look. Indeed, maybe at some point I was troubled by the amount of ribs I had and elected to snap off a couple or more. Whatever your aesthetic preference is, it’s probably achievable in 2021. Never in human history have we had as much agency over our appearance as we enjoy now.

That’s not to say body modification is an entirely novel concept. Ink and scar tattoos, piercings, hair styling and skin bleaching and tanning have been things that various sects of humanity have known for much longer than we present day humans have known nose jobs and ab implants. Body modification has historically been a cultural rather than an aesthetic practice. Since at least 8700BC humans in Africa and the Americas have stretched out their lower lip and inserted a plate in a process aptly titled ‘lip plating’ – the lip plating trend is generally the bigger the hole, the bigger the plate, the more ornate the plate, the better! In a similar fashion foot binding was en vogue for Chinese women dating back to the Song dynasty in the 10th century. Additionally, the earliest evidence of scarification (deliberate wounding of the dermis and epidermis to create scars) dates back to 8000 BC and it’s a practice which was only recently ceased in certain cultures, and continues to this day in others.

Clearly ancient humans have always taken creative liberties in defining their appearances but throughout their lifetimes they would still fundamentally look the same. Modern humanity is not so constrained. Not only can we do every ancient practice of body modification listed above simultaneously, we can do so much more with an ease, efficiency and safety not enjoyed by our ancestors.

What I learned when contemplating how I should direct my hairdresser is that I am my own maker. Like a god, I create myself. The body I was born with may bear no resemblance whatsoever to the body I will die with, such is my personal freedom. Whatever my will may be, I can carry it out on my physical form. My potential to present however I want to is limited only by my imagination and boldness.

These are privileged statements of course and it would be remiss of me to ignore how some do struggle to curate themselves as they wish to be. As an able-bodied, conventional looking cisgender woman I face nearly no practical barriers in creating the physical form I wish to inhabit. The same cannot be said for someone seeking more profound treatments. However, modern science is increasingly revising these treatments and surgeries to be more effective and more accessible.

In time we will all be sculptors with the tools and prowess to carve and mould our physical embodiments. For now, I got the trim and highlights.

discovery