Cut It Off

Melissa Lynne Ball

The author in her modeling days

Word Count 1423

“What would you like to do today?” asked the slender man behind me. Italian. I stared into the oversized mirror directly ahead. Slowly, he pushed his fingers through my long, wavy, burnt-orange hair toward my scalp, lifted, then ran them back down toward the ends.

“Cut it above the shoulders, please,” I said flatly. I knew there would be pushback. I pretended to check my texts to avoid confrontation.

My relationship with my hair was complicated. I hated being a redhead as a child. When I was 15, I was grounded for unsuccessfully trying to dye my hair blonde. Staring at the rows of dyes on the drug store shelf, I chose the box with the prettiest model—not understanding that the “temporary” label meant no bleach, and, thus no blonde. “You’ll like your hair when you’re older,” my mother would say in her thick southern accent. Older women were always stopping me. “You can’t get that color in a bottle,” they would say, seeming awestruck. They don’t know what cool looked like, I thought.

“Bella, your hair is beautiful!” His smell—cigarettes and espresso—hung in the air between us as he caught my eye in the mirror. “Don’t cut it that short. What a shame!”

I understood his resistance. Somewhere around 16, I began to appreciate looking different. That was the age I began modeling. For the most part, I felt uncomfortable as a model. The pressure of maintaining a waif-like body was contagious, even if I was 5’10 and 105 pounds. During my year in Milan (Italy), Monday weigh-ins were required at my agency. We—myself and all the other models—would wait for the agency to open its doors first thing in the morning since you’re at your thinnest at the start of the day. It’s unlikely anyone expanded their waistline on a diet of celery and/or cocaine over the course of seven days. Once inside, we would stand in a single-file line outside a room, and wait for the person ahead to finish their turn before entering. The ideal measurements were 32-24-36 inches for breasts, waist, and hips. When it was my turn, I would undress and stand in front of the floor-length mirror against the wall. Wearing my prettiest bra and panties, I would stare blankly at my reflection—a perfect mannequin devoid of emotions—while a plump Italian woman wrapped a cold, measuring tape around my body, a cigarette dangling from her cracked lips, sending a chill down my spine. A plume of smoke separated our faces. Along with our dimensions, she also recorded our weight. I would step cautiously on the scale, feeling a sense of relief if the number she wrote down was either the same as the previous week or less, knowing my bookers would be pleased.

It wasn’t all negative. For children, being unique isn’t cool. For models, it is celebrated. I booked many editorials, runway shows, and hair campaigns because of my hair. I was an “All-American” girl, looking naturally patriotic with red hair, blue eyes, and fair skin, a walking American flag. My favorite job was a hair campaign for Tocco Magico, an Italian company. It was shot in the Northwest part of Italy, in a village named Aosta. The small town was picturesque to my naïve American eyes, dotted with quaint homes surrounded by snow-capped mountains. The kind of scenery one expects on the front of a postcard. This was a big job and I was nervous. I spent two hours in hair and makeup on the first morning. When she was finished, the makeup artist handed me a mirror. I looked sophisticated—slightly older—and beautiful. My hair was the show-stopper; elegantly styled, cascading down my back. I wanted to grow into that mirror woman one day.

*

We maintained eye contact. Silence. It was a hair stand-off.

Confess the reason and let’s move on, I thought. My palms became sweaty. My eyes darted left and right. I squirmed in my seat.

“Look, I don’t want to. I need to.” I was speaking to his reflection. My tone was crisp. He lifted an eyebrow. He wanted more.

“I start chemotherapy tomorrow. I can’t watch all this fall out.” I reached back with my right hand to reclaim my hair and shook it gently.

The chemotherapy regime guaranteed I would lose my hair—within a few weeks, tops. Instead of subjecting myself to picking up fistfuls of long, dead red hair from my pillow, or worse, subjecting my boyfriend to the same fate, I decided to cut twelve inches off. When my oncologist told me I might come back as a blonde after treatment, I muttered, “I don’t wanna be blonde,” like a pouting toddler who doesn’t get what she wants. How did I hate my hair color all those years?

Cancer served as our hair détente.

He put his hands on my shoulders; compassion spread across his face.

“What kind of cancer?” he asked.

“Breast.”

“But you’re so young.” I had heard this countless times in the month since I was diagnosed. It seemed everyone knew someone who had breast cancer.

“Yeah. I’m twenty-six.” This short exchange left me exhausted. He got the hint.

“Va bene,” he said, quickly removing his hands from my shoulders, as if he was snapped back into reality. “Allora! We’ll get you a stylish bob! Let’s get her shampooed please.” He walked off, the silver chains clipped to his belt loop jiggling against his black pants.

The young European woman lathered my hair. Scents of rosemary and mint from the shampoo nourished me. My body sank into the chair. I closed my eyes while she massaged my scalp. This was my first respite in three weeks from doctors’ appointments, scans, visits from friends and family, and messages of concern. At last, stillness, in this room full of strangers; my anonymity created an opportunity for reflection.

I wanted answers to so many unanswerable questions. Would my body respond to chemotherapy? The expectation was that the tumor in my left breast would shrink after two of the eight doses of chemotherapy on imaging scans. What if it didn’t? And why me? I didn’t know anyone else going through cancer treatment in their mid-20s. I was a medical mystery, an unlucky soul, with no known familial breast cancer at the time. I had one paternal aunt who died from ovarian cancer, which was reason enough to perform a genetic test to see if I carried the BRCA gene. Depending on the genetic results, I would also need my ovaries, fallopian tubes, and uterus removed in addition to all the breast. My femininity was a Jenga tower. Which block—hair, ovaries, breast, fallopian tubes, uterus, child-bearing—would make me crumble if removed? Tears escaped from my firmly shut eyes.

The assistant didn’t seem to notice. She wrapped my head in a towel and gestured to the black leather chair from before. “You can go back.”

Back in the chair, I closed my eyes. Deep breath in, pause, slow release. Eyes open. While the decision to cut my hair was practical, it also was a sign of strength. I—not cancer— made the first step into my new life.

“Should we do some layers, Bella?” He was behind me again.

“It honestly doesn’t matter. It’s all going to be gone soon.” Kill joy, I thought.

“Va bene.” He rolled my chair around to face him. He cut quickly and with great attention. He pulled strands of wet hair towards him: my hair taut between his comb and my scalp. Clumps floated to the ground with each sound of “snip, snip.” I was sitting atop a sea of red hair scattered on the floor. Goodbye, old me, I thought.

After forty-five minutes, which included a blow-dry, he rolled me back around to the mirror. My hair sat a couple inches above my shoulders. It was smooth and straight, like a horse’s shiny mane.

“Bellissima!” My stylist was pleased with his work.

I wanted to like it as much as he wanted me to. The woman in the mirror looked bold, confident, and fearless. I felt numb, scared, and anxious. It turned out to be the best thing I could have done. During my low points over the next several months, it was my memory of the woman in the mirror that gave me the strength to carry on. And she was right there, waiting for me, when I came out the other side.

—

Melissa received her doctorate in chemistry from Columbia University. At her time at Columbia, she co-authored over ten publications and was awarded the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching for her efforts in the classroom. Melissa joined the Loo Group at Princeton University as a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in 2019. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her daughter Margot and husband Mark, writing, cooking, and traveling.