Posted on 12/08/2016 5:42:46 PM PST by nickcarraway
For the past 20 years, Julianna Evans, the director of marketing for the Lumberyard, a contemporary performing-arts company based in New York City, has had the same flowing brown locks. Her stylist in her hometown of Washington, D.C., has been trimming her hair every 12 months for as long as she can remember, and always colors it the same medium-brown shade. Then came the November 8 election upset, and Evans fell into a downward spiral. “I cried for three days,” the Atlanta native, 45, recalls. “I felt like it was the worst thing, politically, that ever happened in my lifetime. It was catastrophic.” By Friday she noticed grays growing in, so she put on her big-girl panties and dragged herself to the drugstore. “Literally without thinking, I grabbed the Natural Black box by Garnier,” she says. “I was like, f** it! The election deadened my soul. I think I wanted to do something defiant to feel stronger.”
That sense of malaise is spreading across D.C. As women stare up at that glass ceiling still hanging over them and contend with a pussy-grabbing kleptocrat moving into the nearby White House, they are collectively — however subconsciously — making their own statements of rebellion by challenging traditional notions of beauty. Just ask any hairstylist in the Beltway.
“When you see that much blonde hair on the floor, you know something is going on,” says Nicole Butler, creative director and master colorist at Daniel’s Salon in Dupont Circle. During the notoriously slow month of November, her salon received a startling number of bookings, with at least three women a day sitting in her chair and asking for a drastic change, like cutting off six inches, going black, or going platinum. “Usually stuff like this is planned for weeks and put on the books after several consultations, but this was very spontaneous,” Butler says. “It was like a mass declaration of independence.” Clients, especially those over 40, expressed a feeling of loss and uncertainty, says Butler. “Maybe this is some kind of compensation for not getting what we wanted in the election. By changing our hair, we can control the outcome.”
Marion Jacobs, a former professor of psychology at UCLA and the author of Take-Charge Living: How to Recast Your Role in Life … One Scene at a Time, believes the phenomenon is a way for women in D.C. to feel powerful in a moment where a stranger has seized the steering wheel. “When people experience a change that is so opposite from their value system, that’s very unnerving,” says Dr. Jacobs, who has a private practice in Laguna Beach, California. “People will use all kinds of coping mechanisms, and cutting their hair and changing their look is one way to show or feel that they are doing something over which they have control.”
Over at Georgetown Salon & Spa, one of the most exclusive salons in D.C., much-sought-after colorist and stylist Mariangela Moore has witnessed this “take control” movement daily for the past month. “One of my clients said, ‘Think of Melania Trump and go in the opposite direction,’” she says. “She said, ‘I don’t want to be that person people see as sexual, I want to be seen as strong.’” Another professional woman cut her hair into a flattop. One client got rid of the blonde highlights she maintained forever, “because she said she never wants to be seen as cheap. I don’t know where that idea came from, but maybe that’s what she’s hearing.” A move away from the look of political parrot Kellyanne Conway, perhaps. In the comfort of Moore’s salon chair, D.C. women are expressing their anger and frustration, and taking a stand with their hair: Many have gone dark and lopped off length. “I don’t know if it’s that their right to choose could be in jeopardy, or that the glass ceiling is still there, but [since the election], I’m seeing more professional women, from all walks of life, changing the way they look.”
George Washington University teaching instructor Dr. Kristian Henderson had been battling with her hair for years, but after the election, she finally took off her weave and cut it all off. “The election results felt like an attack on minorities, women, and marginalized people in general. Having long hair was my attempt to fit into society, so after the election, I felt a need to exert my ‘uniqueness’ and not tie my femininity to the length of my hair,” she says. Vegan chef Mya Zeronis — who says she’s “a minority in almost every way possible: immigrant woman of color and LGBQT person” — clipper-cut her brown hair on November 18 “to send a message to the Trump presidency.” But it’s not just liberals making female-empowerment smoke signals at the hair salon. “I have clients who were so heavily criticized for not voting for the ‘right’ candidate, so they came in for a big change,” remarks Georgetown Salon & Spa’s Moore. “The way they style their hair is a message they can control.”
Julianna Evans likes the narrative she’s commanding, and says she’s keeping her goth look, though her stylist has added some more natural lowlights. “You have to live here to understand that we are immersed in politics every day,” the mother of two explains. “For many of us, with this election, it’s like your boyfriend dumped you in a really shocking way with no explanation and then moved in next door.” She is resigned to fighting against what she sees as a mandate for sexism through her own style choices. “Now, I feel like my hair says you can’t bring me down. This misogyny will not persevere. The bumper sticker for me is, ‘I am woman, hear me roar.’”
Oh PUH-LEEZ!!! This is not "D.C." Women of "D.C." are black, Latina & Ethiopian and they get their hair done at "places" that specialize in their particular type. GSS is for the political class, and that isn't "D.C."
One client got rid of the blonde highlights she maintained forever, “because she said she never wants to be seen as cheap. I don’t know where that idea came from, but maybe that’s what she’s hearing.”
Oh yay for her, maybe she did some redheaded dreds. That'll convince 'em.
A move away from the look of political parrot Kellyanne Conway, perhaps.
Don't diss Kellyanne, she will kick your sad butt six ways from Sunday.
In the comfort of Moore’s salon chair, D.C. women are expressing their anger and frustration, and taking a stand with their hair
Like totally, with a frappacino in hand, no doubt. On their way to Kate Spade for a new clutch to REALLY show their empowerment.
Now watch, by next June, you will see articles written by the same women saying, thanks to Trump, they can’t get a “Quality” Date. All the Open Minded guys must have gotten married, become Queer-Curious or moved back in with their California / New York Baby Mamas.
I know thag the left’s tears are real but their dream is, was, and always will be America’s nightmare.
I feel bad for the but not the least bit sorry.
Not a new concept. Mia Farrow chopped all her long hair off in 1966, after a fight with Frank Sinatra.
That must be Trump getting the message all the snowflakes are sending him with their new hairstyles.
I love that pic. I think my second crew I’m going to Japan to live and work.
I mean, how hard can it be to compete against Japanese men who watch ‘tentacle porn’ and hide in their rooms all day?
If I am misinformed, will those who know more please enlightened me?
Puh-the-tic to hear such inane blather coming from women who want to assert their strength. Strong women don’t go running to a salon to get a haircut to make them feel in control. That is weakness personified.
http://www.returnofkings.com/26763/girls-with-short-hair-are-damaged
I think the article is just a paid advertisement for a hair color brand for whiny maladjusted snowflake loser idiots.
OK you change your hair. We’ll destroy ISIS and fix the health insurance system
Yes. Japan rocks. Why do you think we Tokyo FReepers stay here? For all the reasons you conjecture and hundreds more.
Did you cut your hair off?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3502926/posts?page=16#16
Where’s that clip from?
Looks like someone got him laughing real good :D
Schadenboner. An extreme degree of great pleasure from the misfortune of Never Trump A$$holes whining, crying and moaning after Trump’s victory..
The concept is based on a mental weakness, it is beauty destroyed. I don't know how to explain this statement, but I can try.
I am 60 years old and still have long hair that almost reaches the top of my buttocks, though I wear it up most of the time. I was devastated when Obama won the presidency, but never had the self loathing to cut my hair over it.
These women seem to take Trumps win personally somehow. It would have to be a very personal and highly emotional event for me to cut my hair..id have to be highly distraught, perhaps suicidal, to do such a thing.
I'm not “dissing” women who like shorter style btw, I'm just saying that the pampering one needs to keep long locks is not given up lightly. Unless, of course, the woman is a liberal trying to make a statement that redeems herself.
Hell, I really don't know how to say what I need to say.
Nothing says “Strong Woman” like a howling, rocking, trembling, sob-wracked breakdown complete with wine, ice cream, hysterics, and a new hairstyle.
Those women need more than a haircut or dye job. They are seriously demented.
You explained it very well. You have the perspective of gender and of looking back in time, that I could only guess about. As Mike Savage as said, much of the Liberal world seems to ‘celebrate’ (or romanticize) weakness and deliberate dysfunction.
As I read this article, I kept thinking that it sounds like something the Brad Pitt character in “The Twelve Monkeys” would be saying.
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