Week of February 22nd to February 28th, 2022.
The skies don’t possess any hair of our own, but many millennia filled with careful observation of the world below have pretty much given us the gist of it. It seems to us that there are plenty of practical, clear-cut, easy-to-understand reasons to get a haircut—but these discernable motives have nothing to do with your haircut decisions, Virgo. No, no, your haircut desires are highly abstract. These choices are rooted in fevered emotion—their cause unseen. That doesn’t make them any less real, but it does make it harder to predict when a big change to Your Look™ is on the horizon.
This week, you’ll cut off all of your hair. Actually, forgive me, your past misdeeds would indicate that I need to clarify this common turn of phrase—you are not the one that does the hair cutting this time. At long last you’ve left the stage of your life where you responded to sadness by cutting your own hair (which rendered results that inevitably made you much, much, sadder).
Sad Past You was seemingly always ready to amputate her locks with whichever blade first crossed her odious path. Tiny little beauty scissors? Yep! The pair of “kitchen scissors” you thought you needed (for what?) but have just become your package opening scissors? You bet! Blunt, colorful scissors for children that you were unclear of why you owned but saw no concrete reason to part with and kept for years? Absolutely!
Your new short hairstyle is an actual hairstyle. Unlike the previous time your hair was this short many years ago, which was part of a potent character building process called Growing Out The Pixie Cut You Got Impulsively When You Were Dumped Via A GoFundMe. The GoFundMe was raising money for the person you were in love with to move across the country, which was news to you! Your other coping mechanisms included the purchase of a new cardigan, literally helping the person who dumped you sort out an issue with their trash bins, and driving to three different stores to find coin rollers and subsequently rolling change for two and a half hours whilst sobbing and watching Survivor.
You loved your pixie haircut, despite its impetus, but were youthfully shocked that short hair required more haircuts, which cost money that you did not have (you were too busy buying a grilled cheese and cocktail that tasted like a milkshake every day after school).
This is all to say that the last time you had hair above your shoulders, it was due to a wicked transition. This time, it’s a choice. When you return from the hair salon, you’ll be struck with the realization that no sizable breakdown led to the shedding of 16 inches of hair.
There was a minor incident a few days prior—in which you foolishly looked for PMDD advice online and were told by no less than seven different websites that you’d be fine if you’d just take a hot bath or smell some vanilla—but you’d worked through that fury already with a long, demented tirade (you were out of essential oils, a real force to be reckoned with, apparently).
You’ll wonder if this means that you’ve moved out of the phase(s) of your life where you’re in a constant, rabid state of recklessly responding to feelings you cannot name. Could self knowledge, perhaps, be obtained without the casualty of your appearance?
I’m happy for you and your jazzy new hairstyle, Virgo, I really am. But you’ll have to forgive me if I’m a little skeptical about your claim that you’ve left your years of dramatic responses to your own feelings behind you. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
You’ve long said goodbye to the unchecked rage that, for example, caused fifteen year old you to make your high school PE teacher cry (she was your student government advisor and said that you would be held financially responsible if “enough” money wasn’t raised for a turkey themed “fun run,” and you told her that she was absolutely mistaken about that, and she cried because of your “lack of commitment.” She was later caught shoplifting at the grocery store near your high school—years before the New York Times devoted an entire division of their reporting to petty theft), but you still have plenty of growing to do when it comes to processing your emotions.
Sure, you may change your hairstyle for purely aesthetic reasons now, but there is still your wardrobe to consider. Based on your moods your wardrobe pendulum swings between Linen Earth Mother to Velvet Shadow Woman With Easy Access To Poison—when your true heart actually lies somewhere in the middle.
I’ll take the wins as they come though, Virgo. You’ve become someone who never cuts their own hair, and no longer commissions people to turn her hair into a physical manifestation of all of their anxiety—and I can’t take that away from you.