Yes that’s right, I cut my hair. I know you’ve all scrolled down by now to see the last picture, but now that you’re back up here, let me tell you the story. For the last few years, my has hair looked approximately like this every single day:

It looked like that because it’s a big fluffy mess, and so I always kept it long enough to pull back. It was far too much work too wash, dry and style my hair, which was necessary if I wanted to wear it down, because this is how it looked when not tamed:

Fluffy and kinky: not good qualities for your hair. But I never wanted to cut it because I like keeping it long enough to pull back. I had my hair short for a year in high school, and though it was cute, I hated the pressure of having to do my hair every. single. day. No matter how I felt. But at some point recently, I got really frickin’ sick of having such a disgusting mop on my head. And I was tired of wearing it with the same part, the same twist, the same clip all the time. I started a new job over two months ago, and in that time, nobody even knew how long my hair actually was because they never saw it any way but pulled back and twisted in a clip.

So one day I asked my sister, Andrea, if she’d take me to her stylist. Andrea is pretty fashionable and stylish, so I knew she wouldn’t steer me wrong. She made me an appointment for last Friday, and because I was still a little nervous about the prospect of chopping it off and, god forbid, having to style my hair every day, I made her come with me. I’m a low maintenance gal, and the idea of doing more than shaving my legs once a month or occasionally clipping my toe nails is scary!

Me and my new stylist, Amy.

I lost a lot of hair that day, but it felt really good coming off. Like a mop had been lifted.

Then came the truly hard part: making my hair go from that (above) to that (below). Above is what happens when you blow dry the new do, and that’s only slightly better than what it looks like when it’s air dried. Thank God for the invention of the flat iron. You wiggle that little wand in the direction of my head, and voila!

Right. I wish it was that easy. It actually took the stylist a good half hour and three different hair products to tame the beast. It took me about 20 minutes and two hair products to create a similar look later. That’s a lot of time spent on hair in the life of me. But at least for now, I like it enough to make the sacrifice. What do you think?