Lena Dunham explains why cutting your own hair is an awesome experience

If you’ve ever considered taking matters into your own hands (quite literally) and cutting your own hair, you should know you’ve got the support of Lena Dunham, who thinks everyone should cut their own hair at least once in their lives. Seriously.

Whether you’re the kinda girl who only trusts your mane to a professional, or would feel totally cool giving yourself a new cut, Lena makes a pretty solid case for how liberating it can be to grab the scissors yourself in an essay for Vogue.

She documents her numerous hair adventures, and explains that it all began when she was just 12-years-old.

"I will never forget the first time I cut my own bangs: the power, the adrenaline. I was twelve years old, standing in the fluorescent light of my parents’ bathroom with a pair of orange-handled craft scissors, unaware that I was standing on the precipice of self-definition.

The sound of the first chop, thick and harsh, was thrilling. I watched my hair pile up in the sink, then looked into the mirror: I had given myself blunt, successive layers that resembled a staircase headed to nowhere. Nothing about the haircut could have been perceived as skilled, fetching, or even sane. But I had never felt more alive.

She explains that she went on to give herself new looks in high school and college, much to the dismay of her parents and classmates. But Lena says it’s the best way for her to express her own individuality, and truly feel like herself.

"I want to feel beautiful in a way people can understand, and yet I want to feel like my own tiny revolution. Every time my hair is blown flat or (God forbid) curled with a small but mighty iron, I lose a piece of myself. It’s taken practice and establishing an almost marital intimacy with my hairstylist Rheanne White for her to understand just the amount of weird I need to feel while also being properly armored for Hollywood’s roughest moments.

But I never want to lose that edge, that sense of experimentation that fueled my twelve-year-old boldness (and the baby bangs of a nineties-era Winona I self-trimmed earlier this year)."

And, as she mentions, the most beautiful thing about hair? “It’ll grow back. It will always grow back.” YASSS, girl. We’re inspired.

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