Whether you get the itch every couple of months or your prefer to leave your look unchanged on end, at one point or another we’ve all asked ourselves the same question: “Should I cut my hair?”
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Every time I walk into a hair salon, I hitch a ride on a very strange train of thought: I am convinced that if I get the haircut I have in mind—say, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s side-parted lob, which I have brought to every salon visit for the past year—my quality of life will improve significantly. I will be healthier. My house will miraculously clean itself. People will think I am cooler, smarter, and more fun to be around than before. I will go to the gym at least three times a week. I will stop feeling like I need to have a dessert immediately following any and all meals.
This is all in my imagination, but a really great haircut can indeed be transformative. It can’t make you exercise more, but it can make you exit the salon feeling like a million bucks, which is exactly how much you probably paid for it. A good haircut makes you feel good, and that doesn’t mean your hair looks bad right now or anything. It just means that, hey, losing a few inches to a blunt cut or getting a fresh set of bangs might shock your system just enough to push your SAD into recovery mode or take out a new lease on life.
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So do it, and take these 20 nauseatingly cool reasons to get a haircut into account. Think of it as the modern update of those cheesy-as-hell stock-photo hair-inspiration books they used to keep in salon waiting rooms. Remember?
Originally published April 2016. Updated March 2017.
