The day I got bangs, I went to see “Ghost World” with my best friend, Emmy. For the first time since I started frequenting Vidiots, the theater was dominated by groups of friends rather than couples. That night, a million hushed “sorry!’s” could be heard throughout the auditorium as hordes of alternatively inclined women — because there were mostly women — flattened themselves to move through their row. Next to me, Emmy whispered as the movie began, “They look even better than I imagined,” alluding to my bangs. This was the world I believed I had committed to in getting bangs: female friendship, indie theaters, Terry Zwigoff, an appreciation for vintage Steve Buscemi. The fringe was even a little shorter than I’d had in mind, a length I hoped would be read as intentional and not an oversight by a hairdresser my mother would later deem “clearly jealous of you.”We ran into several of Emmy’s friends outside the theater afterward. There was joy in pretending this was a complete coincidence and not a highly probable event; these were all ladies with bangs. I told them I got mine hours ago and the group emitted a collective purr. I felt transported to someone’s middle school bedroom while standing on the corner of Eagle Rock Boulevard and Yosemite. “You look like you’ve had them for a long time,” someone said to the space just above my eyes. No one else had affirmed my bangs in quite the same way. Alya wears TOWER 28 ShineOn Plumping Lip Jelly in Act Natural. Months earlier I’d moved from an east-of-Eastside suburb to Los Feliz, where the quickest path to assimilation appeared to be the one I could cut across my forehead. Every style of bang abounded — bottleneck, Birkin, curtain — including a few they must have invented in my outer-city absence (enter: Jane Austen bangs). Getting bangs was a local rite of passage; even if they flopped, I’d be setting out on the same Hero’s Journey as most of my new neighborhood.I’d found the reference photo of ‘00s Penélope Cruz on Pinterest. The tension between her timeless beauty and slightly choppy bangs read as a playful confrontation with anyone who dared to observe her. You couldn’t defy her beauty, because she’d already done so first — and in doing so, had only managed to reinforce the truth of her beauty. The image is, all at once, a thesis, counterargument and rebuttal proving her capacity to stun. I’d considered the relatively safe curtain bang, which was sure not to offend — and sure to prove nothing. I’d received a few suggestions to go for something tinier, edgier. These were people who had faith in my face, the way Penélope’s people had in hers, which flattered me for vague, Sagittarius sun-related reasons.Bangs were forbidden in my home of origin. My mother had more of a ’90s Brooke Shields side-part vision for me, and so it was. Bangs were for the meek, the insecure, those with something to hide — or alternatively those going through some kind of life crisis. But owning my desire to withdraw was in itself an assertion. I got bangs once before, months into leaving home for college, and rather than feel captive behind my hair, I felt most myself. Aesthetically, I now led with a decision of who I was, the cut informing every first impression. Intrinsic to that same cut was the declaration that I’d reclaimed some part of myself, for myself, behind the bangs.“Bangs … are so often framed as a crisis decision, and I honestly think that narrative is a little unfair,” Lauren Bailey-Chaidez, owner of Eastside salon Feverfew — popular for its bangs and shags — tells me. “Hair can be deeply emotional and expressive, but that doesn’t automatically make it irrational.” The Penélope picture had been shown to my stylist, and while she didn’t dare ask me “What’s wrong?” she did take me through the routine line of questioning that might have revealed what was, in fact, up. No damning life event preceded my change in style, though I’d recently stopped dating and found some strange joy in perceiving bangs as another barrier-to-entry to anyone who tried. The fact that self-assertion ran synonymous with barrier-to-entry did not occur to me at the time.I returned to Vidiots the week after “Ghost World” to see “In the Mood for Love.” Being single for six years caused me to assume that everyone was as prone to going alone as I was, and I naively expected the crowd would be made up of Criterion’s most illustrious male subscribers. Alone in the concessions line, I spotted one: a man I went on one date with a year ago. The one who called me six weeks later, on my birthday, to say he’d been busy and would be indefinitely but who texted me from the airport on Christmas, crafted personalized memes, and sent screenshots of what Co-Star told him about me — and us — before retreating so abruptly that I had to remind myself I hadn’t made him up each time it happened. The one who, eight months prior, I sincerely thanked for his time before saying I would no longer be in touch. I thought there was a chance he might not recognize me behind my bangs before he cut in front of me. He was so good at making me question whether I was even there; perhaps the bangs had worked. Then he turned. Among his questions about outdated details of my life, he suggested we catch up sometime. The idea was liable to catch fire between us. I had hoped the bangs would repel him, but my new facial accessory failed to be a punctuation between us in the way I’d imagined. It wasn’t the first time I’d hoped to communicate aesthetically what I couldn’t communicate verbally. TOWER 28 BeachPlease Cream Blush in Dream Hour. I trimmed my bangs after a six-week deliberation. I called my mom just to hear her say it: If I grew my bangs out, I’d be letting the world in. I considered how growing them out might somehow change my fate, attract new things (people). My vision crowded with strands in the wake of my indecision. I made an appointment at the salon just to cancel hours later.Three weeks into this deliberation, I met J. He came out of nowhere, it seemed, except I knew exactly where he came from: the same small-ish town that I did, including the same high school. After a few dates, being seen not only for who I was but for who I had been became quickly terrifying. The instinct to maintain my bangs returned. The idea that bangs are the result of a breakup (or break with reality) was suddenly reversed; the crisis at the dawn of a new relationship after not having been in one for years rippled far greater than the steady, dull crisis of continuing to not have one. In my newfound visibility, I doubled down on the style that concealed something — anything — about me, if only a few inches of forehead.Alyson Zetta Williams is a Los Angeles-based writer who can be found at sorry4444.substack.com and @alysonzw. TOWER 28 BeachPlease Cream Blush in After Hours. Photography Franco ZuluetaHair Dominique St. RoseCreative Direction Jess Aquino de JesusTalent Alya NguyenMakeup Daphne del RosarioProduction Mere StudiosPhotography Assistant Zach ArquilevichProduction Coordinator Victoria KoviosLocation Projkt Studios
