Friends, colleagues, ladies, gentlemen, and non-binary unwilling participants of the jury, I am here to discuss with you an issue near and dear to the core of my being. This issue affects every member of not only this community but the entire world.
And that issue is bangs.
There is a common misconception in our society, a misconception that if left unchecked will lead to disastrous consequences. This idea that women get bangs only after a heartbroken moment of weakness and that bangs are a careless mistake, to be grown out immediately. These stereotypes are a leading cause of why I cannot get a date.
It pains me so deeply to see that people do not understand the years I poured myself into my studies, agonizing carefully and thoughtfully over whether or not my forehead could host a curtain of hair and whether my hair was the correct texture to maintain a thick and luxurious curtain. I used countless apps to add endless varieties of bang styles to numerous photos of my face. I tested how countless cuts would look at from various angles with different lighting, before finally begging my roommate to take shears to my hair in our kitchen while ‘Cut Your Bangs’ by Girlpool played on repeat. Only to look in the mirror and wish I had never been born. Not only was hair littered all over the kitchen, destined to be found in random bowls for weeks afterward, but the remaining hair on my forehead was unruly and somehow… spikey?
It took a few weeks of adjustment, but then my hair curtain began to fall into place… about 48.7% of the time. This was the basis of many fights with my extremely South Asian mother about if I thought I was a fancy white girl who had forgotten her heritage and her mother tongue? To which I could only say ‘Mujhe kuch nahi patha hai’ which means “I don’t know”… the language or my heritage.
Through this tumultuous time of transition in my life, I met someone. Someone who could look through my bangs and into my heart. Her name was Gabi. GABI. Imagine a little heart dotting that ‘i’. She approached me, bangs and all, after an agonizing performance by yours truly. Believe it or not, Gabi walked up to me and introduced herself after seeing me do two-person improv for twenty exhausting minutes. It was a twenty-minute mono-scene where I played a cat lady attempting to find her nephew a date to the prom. If she was still attracted to me after that, I knew we had something special.
We were a passionate couple. The kind that would make your eyes roll out of your head once you saw how obnoxious we were. The kind that unironically said, “No, you hang up first.” You know the kind.
Two weeks. Two weeks of pure, unmitigated bliss. And then she ghosted me. My bangs and I did not play it cool in the slightest. At 2 am while doing some light internet stalking, I figured out what had happened. She had a new girlfriend, and the worst part of all: her girlfriend had bad bangs.
There were numerous reasons to leave me: I can’t brush my teeth without getting toothpaste on my shirt, I can’t eat a meal without my nose leaking afterward, and I am bad at math. But to leave me for someone who has BAD BANGS?! I just couldn’t fathom it. This new girlfriend’s bangs split awkwardly in the middle and went all sorts of directions, never mind that the wind was blowing in this particular photo. The betrayal stung like no other. I pinned my bangs back in mourning for what was and what could have been.
I thought to myself: if we, as women, are going to continue to love and cherish other women who have bad bangs, what have we come to as a society? I understand I was calling for more compassion to those with bangs among us, but that compassion should be reserved for those of us who can work them close to half of the time.
And so, good people of the jury, let me amend my previous argument: I want fair representation for people who have good bangs, and for people who don’t steal other people’s almost-girlfriends out from under them. I can’t defend those people, as I cannot understand or speak to their experience.
In any case, this situation left me heartbroken, questioning whether I even knew what good bangs were anymore, and still fighting with my mother. South Asian mothers have a strange attachment to their daughter’s hair. She continuously told me that my bangs clashed with my nose (I don’t understand it either), and this argument lasted until one day she said: your hair looks nice. Suddenly, I had been accepted.
Like clouds parting after a storm, the comments about my hair symbolizing a constant state of mental distress subsided. My bangs started falling correctly about 74.6% of the time. While my bangs were not born in a state of distress, it did seem that a state of distress occurred in my life at the same time as my bangs.
I went home for a week to visit my parents, only to be met with a very shocking surprise. My mother had gotten bangs.
People of the jury, let me amend my argument one final time: my mother should not have bangs.
