Hair

During the month of July, Doina Buzut will take a break from the English-language webcast of Gloria.TV News, to visit her family in Moldova. She is expected to return by the end of the month, which is when the image on the sidebar at the right will look different. So you'll know when we do.

There's been quite a discussion around the water cooler here at mwbh, concerning the different ways in which Ms Buzut wears her beautiful long hair. Most of the time, she wears two braids. But sometimes she gets a little creative, and wears only a single braid. Then there are those days when she might oversleep just a little, and she goes, well, braidless. (Is that a word?)

But while you're judging for yourselves, let's talk about ME again.

Personally, I was never able to wear my hair long as a kid. I wore what was called a "burr" haircut, the kind that looks like it started out clean-shaven, but allowed to grow for a month or two. Then just before I started seventh grade, my brother and I begged the old man to let us grow it longer, or just to grow it at all. We must have caught him at a weak moment, because he relented. For the next six years, when it began touching the ears, it was time to go to the barber shop again. And we lived with the stigma of being "square" (which back then meant "not cool").

The last time Dad forced me to get a haircut was the weekend before I started college. I was three months shy of turning nineteen. Not that I heard the end of it, though. He'd yell at me for looking like a slob, and Mom would give me some nonsense of how a woman's hair was her “crowning glory.” It sounded perfectly ridiculous to me at the time.

Meanwhile, kids of my generation would complain that adults would pre-judge them for the length of their hair, then would do the same to their own friends. That still sounds perfectly ridiculous to this day.

I envy my son's generation. He has friends who shave their heads, and others who let it go to their shoulders. Paul used to wear a "burr" until the seventh grade, too, only he didn't mind it. He wore it long a few years back, but now wears it shorter. Aside from the prospect of losing it as his Dad would, it's not that much of an issue for him. It's just what it is.

Perhaps our obsession with the cosmetic has taken a new turn, and we can be more at ease with who we are, which may be the one good thing that comes out of all this "diversity" talk.

Most of which also sounds perfectly ridiculous. But, that's another story ...
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