The Emotional Roller Coaster Of Deciding To Get A Lob Like Cara Delevingne
All drastic haircuts start out with inspiration from an irritatingly ~chic~ celebrity, don't they?
This time, it's the queer fashion icon, supermodel, Lagerfeld muse, posh London socialite, grunge princess, little sister of the chicest bitch alive (Poppy) and eyebrow icon forever, Cara Delevingne.
Ugh. Let me tell you, babes, this little bitch is going to ruin my life for the next SIX months.
"Why, Zara? Why is this bitch going to destroy you?" I can feel you ask me through the dismal static of the computer screen. Well, don't fret. I'll tell you why.
And let me assure you, it has nothing to with the fact I'm just wildly jealous of her because she a celesbian (celebrity plus lesbian), and I long to be a famous queer girl just like her.
(OK, maybe I'm a little annoyed because I wanted to be the chicest lesbian on the block, but I promise you that's not what's bothering me about her today.)
She's going to shatter my life for the next six months because of her goddamn haircut!
If you're totally fashion inept and can't see what I'm talking about, it's her new lob haircut. It's blunt, clavicle-grazing and super sexy, and she's killing the game right now.
It's making her piercing blue eyes just seem to POP in a way they've never POPPED before, and the shade she's throwing us in this picture is more severe than usual because there is something just so incredibly authoritative about a woman with a no-nonsense bob, you know?
Plus, she has that slightly disheveled, "I'm too chic to care," off-duty model swagger. In fact, when I showed this picture of her to my editors, they both went, "Oh, I don't like it. It looks like she cut a bob and was too lazy to get it touched up."
THAT'S EXACTLY WHY I LIKE IT, DUH. There is nothing more chic than the LOB because it's like you cut a bob, and you are too pretty to give a fuck about something as mundane as your hair growing out. So, you just let it go.
Only really beautiful people can pull of something so effortless. Or, they're really busy people who are busy doing important things and don't have time for the salon.
And I want to be deemed both beautiful and busy. That's what is sending me down this inevitable downward spiral.
Wanting to emulate the success of another woman and thinking the key is hair is my greatest downfall.
This is the emotional roller coaster I fly down every time I fall into the celebrity lob-longing vortex:
Stage 1: I waste a day pondering.
So, for the rest of the day, all I'm going to be doing is wondering, "CAN I PULL OFF THIS LOB?"
It's already started. The first thing I did when I got to my desk (after attempting to nurse my horrendous default Friday hangover with a mega cup of coffee) was text my best friend, celebrity hair stylist Owen Gould, who regularly styles the hair of one of my classic lob icons, Jessica Alba.
This is them:
"OWEN, HAVE YOU SEEN CARA'S NEW HAIR?" I manically message him, covering the computer so my editors didn't see. They know me well enough to realize that if I venture down this black hole, there's no coming back.
"LOVE IT," he hastily texts me back. He's busy on a job with Camila Alves and doesn't have time to indulge my lob fetish. But, I'm just a girl who doesn't take no for an answer, so I push.
"SHOULD I GET IT?" I typed back, still in all caps for added urgency.
"WE WILL TALK ABOUT IT LATER. I'M WORKING."
"Ugh. Way to leave a girl hanging. I really need some new friends," I smugly think to myself.
But, it doesn't stop me from wondering, "Can I pull this off? Will I look frumpy? Will I look cool? I'll totally look cool. Yeah, but what if I hate it? Isn't that what extensions are for, you dumb idiot face? Yeah, but last time you got extensions, you accidentally pulled one out of your head in front of a cool girl you were chatting up at a bar, remember? Oh yeah."
I'm literally a crazy psycho person going back and forth with myself about whether or not this haircut will look good on me. It's textbook vanity, and it's all Cara's fault.
Stage 2: I see the world with lob-colored glasses.
Right now, I'm looking at the world with lob-colored glasses. All I can do is think about how MUCH BETTER life would be if I had a lob.
Like, my vintage (well, vintage-inspired) dress would look so much MODERN if it was paired with a lob cut. And I would look so much more fierce typing away at my laptop if I only had a lob.
In fact, I think a lob would get me out of this dire creative rut I'm in.
I mean, what breathes new life into a girl like a fresh haircut? Nothing, babes. I mean, I would be a sexier, happier, more successful, more chic girl creature if I had a lob haircut, you know?
Stage 3: I pull the trigger and book the appointment.
This is a dangerous phase. I'm high off the celebrity obsession, and I keep clicking back to the picture of the celeb lob I'm currently crushing on.
Damn, it looks fierce. Damn, it looks so fly. Damn, it looks so — wait, did you just say "fly?" WHO ARE YOU?
A GIRL WHO CLEARLY NEEDS A LOB TO GET IT TOGETHER.
"Screw it," I say to myself, drunk off of adrenalin and self-hate. "I'm booking the damn appointment."
I politely excuse myself to pick up "Seamless" downstairs, but really I call my stylist. She's booked.
But, hell hath no fury like a woman on a mission to cut a lob. No worries, I'll just book with her assistant. Bitch has being dying to get her hands on my hair since she graduated from cosmopolitan school, anyway.
Have I mentioned this lob ordeal has made me painfully narcissistic and super delusional?
Stage 4: Panic attack in the salon chair.
You gaze at your reflection in the salon chair after the wash. Your hair is pulled back into the severe towel and you wonder if you've always been this ugly.
Suddenly, you're hit with a dose of stone-cold reality: You're not going to be able to pull this off.
Because you know what, Zara? You're not Cara Delevingne.
Just because you're both queer doesn't mean you look alike, you damn bigot. You don't have her acid, bleached blonde hair and seafoam eyes.
You're a brooding brunette who needs a long, wild mane in order to maintain her ice queen identity. In fact, your entire identity is wrapped around having a MANE. What are you doing?
You feel the all too familiar panic start to set in. You're making a huge mistake. You look up at your stylist with your heavily mascara-coated doe eyes and aw.
She looks so excited to be doing something different.
And as if she's reading your mind, she smiles at you and says, "Zara, you know every girl in New York has boring long hair. It's so cool that you're doing something different. You're so cool, Zara. Thank you for NOT BEING like everyone else."
You know you're screwed and you're stuck getting this hair, whether you want it anymore or not.
Stage 5: The black depression.
I look at myself in the mirror, praying to baby Jesus that I will look gamine and sophisticated like Cara.
Except, I don't. Because I don't look anything like Cara. I look like a frumpy soccer mom because I'm not 90 pounds with cheekbones cut from marble, set off by abrasive eyebrows.
I hate it. I hate myself. I spend the next six months in a black depression with a lob I hate. I take up smoking and start drinking too much.
Until finally, it grows out. And just as I'm starting to get my confidence back...
Stage 6: The cycle repeats itself.
Cut to eight months from today: I wake up with a hangover for the ages, and I see some other celebrity of the moment has cut her hair into a glorious lob.
"Shit," I think as I gaze into the mirror, my hungover eyes feeling like someone has just poured peroxide into them.
I squint at my reflection and think, "Shit, maybe I wouldn't look so basic and hungover if only I cut a lob."
And the cycle repeats itself.
