Bang Bang
Written by Shelby Evans, Lifestyle Staff Writer
I reached the point in my twenties (10 days after turning 21) where I had to do what must be done: attempt bangs.
I’m not the first one to reach this right of passage, and I certainly won’t be the last. I can’t say what I’ve done was brave, albeit I have been told that. I would say what I did was an impulsive act of pure naiveness. It’s as simple as walking into a Supercuts on a Saturday morning. It’s ten minutes of your life, and the effects stick with you forever,
Why do we get bangs? Why do so many young women throw away their trusted hairstyles to attempt them? Shock and awe? To be seen? In hope that it will help you find yourself? Maybe because in your complete sadness you’ve watched the 2005 film Pride and Prejudice one too many times and Kiera Knightley’s beauty with bangs is all you want to strive towards?
The latter option might have been my case, but why do others? Why is it that I feel my bang decision is more monumental than when I had purple hair followed by blue hair at the age of 17?
As a woman, bangs are a right of passage that teaches you to take risks, be humble, and who to trust. And I’m somewhere in the middle of this truly humbling journey.
I walked into work the day after I got my bangs, and none of my five male coworkers noticed the change of hairstyles. But I walked into class that Monday and the few female acquaintances noticed immediately.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” was my response to not forcing compliments from people, especially from my friends.
In one year, when the bangs have grown out, and I feel good about my hair I’ll conjure up a joke about the horrible day that I thought bangs would be okay. All my friends will concur that, yes, I did look awful with bangs. But they were the same people insisting that they looked good the first week I had them.
Bangs have the ability to make or break someone’s self-perception. And that’s important for a woman to go through. We need to teach ourselves to do what we want, and how to be vulnerable, and to not put our self worth in others. Bangs teach a girl how to do all of this.
We’ve all thought about it, we’ve all binge-watched New Girl and have been inspired by Jessica Day’s, Zoey Deschanel, capacity to rock the bang.
A week after getting mine a friend joked that the bangs matched my quirk. What else was to be done other than sing the New Girl theme with my name inserted?
Can I rock the bang? The jury is still out, but I’d put money on being like the thousands of other girls who simply must live with the ghost of a tried and failed bang.
I’ve learned that sometimes what others think is a bad idea, might be a good idea for myself. I’ve learned that everyone talking about a new haircut makes me embarrassed, and to embrace that vulnerability I need to experience it.
I’ve also learned that regardless of the compliments, I don’t know how I feel about it, and that’s okay because I’m listening to myself, not others, and that’s important.