Life Experiment: Get a Blindfolded Haircut
How long have you had your hair style? What does it say to others about who you are?
How much of your identity - and your image of yourself - is tied up in your hair?
When I was 19, having face hair was new to me. It came in patches when it did come, so I usually shaved it, not wanting to look too scraggly. Then, by luck and by accident, I didn't look in a mirror for 60 days because I was away from civilization.
Not only did I forget what I looked like, when I saw myself again I had something I had never had. You could call it a beard. Who was I, again?
I can be a restless person. I don't know why, sometimes I get tired of myself, and I just need to change things up. Sometimes when this would happen I would cut my own hair.
This time I put out a request to a local facebook group: I wanted someone to cut my hair who didn't know me. I wanted to be blindfolded, so I wouldn't be able to see what they were doing, and I wanted to do this in a public park and not in a hair salon surrounded by mirrors.
I didn't want the stylist to know me because I didn't want them to connect my hair with my identity; I didn't want them to give me a hairdo that could tell others in any meaningful way who I was.
I wanted to experience the risk of entrusting an unknown person with my visual appearance, and I wanted to continue to not know what I looked like for as long as possible.
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Not knowing what I looked like only lasted a glorious 4 hours, as I lived in a city and seeing my reflection turned out to be unavoidable. Before that, I got to see a few friends' reactions to my new unknown haircut. The mystery was fun while it lasted.
So many of us try so hard to influence how others perceive us - or how we perceive ourselves - with our visual appearance. How much effort goes into that? How much thinking about it, what others will think of you, how you want them to react to you, how much do you check your reflection when you pass a mirror?
What if you let go of all that. What if you actually didn't choose your haircut, and what if the person who chose it for you knew nothing about you.
Unlike being a child, when haircuts were the worst because you didn't have a choice because your parent chose for you, you choose not to choose. This time, you choose to surrender the idea that you will try to say who you are with your visual appearance.
Or maybe your next haircut will choose you.
If you try this, or something like this, I would love to hear how it goes. I guarantee you will learn something about yourself.
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