This week marks five years for the reason that launch of Dazed Beauty! Over the subsequent five days we might be celebrating this anniversary by bringing you big celebrity interviews, cultural deep dives into the extraordinary trends of today, and going back through the archives to resurface a few of our favourite pieces.

To cite our co-founder Bunny Kinney in his original editor’s letter, Dazed Beauty is: “an area for us to document, deconstruct and experiment with beauty in all its forms, in every dimension, and tell the stories of the lived experience each one in all us has in our own individual bodies as we navigate the world, each online and off.” We hope we’ve remained true to our promise and can proceed to be difficult, anti-establishment, diverse and exciting. Thanks for being a part of our journey.

It was right after the September eleventh attacks in 2001 when a client paid Latest York-based hairstylist Siobhan Benson a visit. “She was really upset about it and he or she desired to cut off all of her hair,” recalls Benson, who was in beauty school on the time but now owns her own salon in Brooklyn called Cut Loose. Nevertheless, the client wasn’t in the best headspace to make the cut – she cried and ended up leaving the salon sans recent ‘do. Within the salon world, this case shouldn’t be unusual and Benson admits she’s seen her fair proportion of clients who’ve come to her in a highly emotional state wanting to make a drastic change to their appearance.

Our hair holds a variety of weighty emotions and drastic haircuts, particularly for ladies, are nothing recent. Back in February 2007, Britney Spears famously walked right into a salon and shaved her own head. While the moment continues to be heavily scrutinized by the media today, on the time Spears was within the midst of a divorce, reportedly coping with a substance abuse disorder, and wrestling with mental illness. Shaving her head was a way of freeing herself from agony and exerting some control over the powerlessness she felt over her highly publicized life.

Several movies have also captured the emotional experiences of girls who’ve wrestled with trauma and gone on to hack some or all of their hair off. Within the 1988 film, The Accused, Jodie Foster’s character Sara Tobias cuts her hair from a shoulder-length style into a protracted pixie after she is gang-raped and her rapists should not found guilty. Then there’s Deb from the 1995 teen dramedy Empire Records who shaves her head following a suicide attempt as a way to make herself “visible”. Within the second season finale of Girls, meanwhile, Hannah Horvath takes scissors to her hair after a foul OCD spell wherein she punctured her eardrum with a q-tip and failed to jot down a book in a single single day. These popular culture moments are telling concerning the strong relationship between drastic haircuts and our emotional states.

In line with Rebecca Newman, a psychotherapist based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, “Once we’re going through a period of transition that is especially painful, we are likely to make decisions that provide immediate relief.” This may stem from the sensation of wanting to rid ourselves of intense or difficult emotions, causing us to make rash decisions comparable to impulsive purchases or getting a serious haircut. In this manner, Newman says, making a change to our physical appearance can feel akin to shedding a layer of skin wherein we assume we’ll feel immediately higher after the act. Nevertheless, doing so ultimately doesn’t eliminate our distress as these external acts don’t appease our internalized anguish.

When a romantic relationship ends, it’s common for people to have the desire to make a change to their hair. “Grief after a break-up can drive someone towards making a giant change in appearance, as a way of doubtless lifting the literal and metaphorical ‘weight’ of the hair,” says Newman. Maintaining long hair can require an amazing deal of products, time, and patience, and letting go of that maintenance can symbolise the letting go of the emotional labour of the connection, too.

For me, my relationship with haircuts has at all times been incredibly complicated. In times after I’ve been feeling particularly down about myself, getting a recent hairstyle has at all times given me a short lived dose of oxytocin – it has been a way of feeling higher about myself in times after I’ve been especially low. Yet, at the identical time, I cry at any time when I get a haircut. For whatever reason, changing up my look tends to provide me a full-blown identity crisis. As someone who lives with chronic depression and anxiety, haircuts and I even have a sophisticated relationship.

In line with a recent study by TYME at the side of YouGov, 20 per cent of the 680 U.S. women surveyed reported to have cried over a haircut they didn’t like while 1 in 6 women said they might be embarrassed to exit in public if there’s something unsuitable with their hair.

Newman believes that our understanding and standards of beauty often shape how we expect and approach hair. “Our hair might help make us feel higher about ourselves, nevertheless it doesn’t inherently hold any magical power,” she says. The re-invention of our physical selves can create a false sense of control. While we’d feel like we’re in the motive force’s seat of whatever is going on, it’s essential to acknowledge that though we will influence certain circumstances in our lives, the one thing we will really manage is our emotions and reactions. In times of distress, we may seek different technique of escape, comparable to a serious haircut, as a substitute of recognizing how making a drastic, and possibly regrettable, change to our appearance will only give us a fleeting sense of agency, argues Newman.

To find out whether an extreme haircut is a healthy way of coping, Newman suggests asking yourself if you happen to are making the choice from an empowered place, a spot of fear, or attempting to use it as an artificial technique of internal change. “If an individual has been quietly taking a look at hairstyles in magazines or on Instagram for some time, it may not be such a drastic shift in any case,” she says. Beyond this, Benson at all times recommends that her clients wait until they feel calmer to find out whether a drastic ‘do is something they honestly want.

Still, in certain situations, a recent hairstyle will be liberating – giving us recent style options and ways to present ourselves to the world. With this, Benson recalls a young client who got their head shaved off at age 12 as the primary technique of claiming and outwardly asserting their identity as transgender. As a hairstylist, she explains the importance of getting empathy for all of her clients. “You take care of so many alternative walks of life who come to your chair with all their baggage,” she says. In this manner, when done in the best headspace, haircuts generally is a real technique of self-transformation, and help us grow to be more confident in ourselves.

This text was originally published 26 March 2019.