Miley Cyrus Brings Up a Great Point: Can You Ever Be Completely Satisfied with Your Hair?

We, as a species, are stupid in that we don't recognize absurdly obvious things about ourselves until someone points it out. If this sounds oddly specific to you (it really shouldn't), let me explain with a hypothetical scenario.

Scenario: Over the last few months, you have the vague sense that your hair has been coming into its own. Your suspicion is confirmed when a professional hairstylist who once threw up her hands at the sight of your unworkable texture and a beauty editor you've worked with for nearly two years both go "Wow. Your hair looks great." You think, "Oh, I think my hair looks great."

Pity the fool who broke the opposite news to Miley Cyrus about her platinum quiff, but judging by the amount of self-awareness/loathing in her recent 400-word Facebook treatise on trusting your gut and not turning to bleach in times of boredom, she didn't need to have anything revealed to her at all. 

Valid and well-articulated points, but can we just take this further and bring up the ontological (as it pertains to hair)? Like, why do we even try? Why do we even have hair if not to wreck it? Also, when you shave your head, does your hair resume a virgin state?

I used to believe in a Life Cut—the idea of your One True Hairstyle, as explained by beauty blogger Michelle Villett—but I'm not so sure anymore because it implies the very 2016 but potentially very unhappy-making preoccupation with contentment. On the one hand, finding an objectively "good" haircut you can keep requesting for the rest of your days isn't unappealing. But on the other hand, don't you *die* the moment you stop innovating?

Maybe that's why I don't want Miley to #misstheoldme, or, worse yet, grow her hair out into a textured lob with blunt ends falling somewhere between the chin and collarbone. I want her to keep pushing. Because, yes, I might be overthinking it, but 1) that's what I do, and 2) if you overthink it too, hair = a never-ending self-improvement project = a metaphor for life. Good layers, bad dye job, furtive snips with kitchen shears—it all builds into the only self-determined scar tissue that gives you a fresh start every few months.

Love what you've got, but love what you're making yourself into more. It's definitely been over-shared, but it couldn't hurt to hear this Bowie quote again, in this context: "I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring."

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