Putting on your game hair

Interesting piece in NYT by Dana Jennings reflecting on the "buzz cut" hairdo he got shortly before undergoing surgery for prostate cancer. Jennings says he needed the "primal ferocity" that a buzz cut conveys. More generally, Jennings says that style or fashion or appearance is an important way for sick people to communicate with themselves and the world around them:

It was only after the fact that I learned that my hair-shearing reaction to having cancer wasn’t so unusual. I understood that the buzz cut spoke of a new me. It still reminds me that I’ve been tempered in the crucible of cancer, that I have changed. But it’s also part of a muted tradition that’s consistent with the transformation, transition and trauma that I’ve gone through.

I can dig that. I've been sporting my own buzz cut for the last couple years. Every two weeks, I sit down with the clippers and a #2 guard and trim off the half-inch or so that's accumulated. (For the record, Jennings goes with a much closer 1/0 cut every 3 weeks--dude, that's badass.)

I'll concede that my 'do had more to do with my thinning hair than it did with MS, but it has changed my own sense of who I am. I think it conveys the sort of no-nonsense practicality that I aspire to. It's low-maintenance, a little severe, and recession-friendly (not that I ever spent more than $20 on a haircut, but still).