You know that moment at the hairdresser’s where you’re like: Oh. My. God. Omigod omigod omigod. You start hyperventilating as you envision the various types of hats and scarves that will be your daily accessory for the next three months while you try to calm your breathing so your hairdresser won’t notice the signs of panic as your eyes dart to the six-inch strands lying in copious profusion on the floor. It’s ok, you tell yourself. It’ll be fine, you say as she takes a round brush to your newly created bangs. It’s not as bad you think. Yeah, it’s a really hip haircut.

For a 45-year-old. Who lives in a trailer park.

…Breathe. Breathe.

You think desperately of the stylish, piecey bangs you had in mind—perhaps you didn’t articulate that idea well enough? It’ll still look like that when she’s done, right? Right? You tell yourself that it’s ridiculous to get this worked up over a haircut, not when people are dying from genocidal government policies in Sudan, not when people praying at mosques in Iraq are getting blown into bits daily, not when Russia is selling guns to Chechens whom it later condemns as terrorists in the same breath that it claims the right to make preemptive strikes against terrorism—ridiculous! I mean, who even worries about this stuff? What intelligent person honestly worries that their hair is on the vanguard of the retro-eighties look? Seriously, I have more important things to think about. Like how I’m going to look at myself in the mirror for the next three months. (It’ll only take three months for the bangs to catch up with the rest of my hair, right?)

Hats, hats.

There has to be a point where you ask yourself: Bangs. Why? They didn’t work in second grade, and they ain’t gonna work now. And yet they have this strange, Siren-like allure that you never give in to until the moment you’re sitting in the chair and there’s all those neat products around you and copies of Glamour and Elle and People and Cosmo and you get these irrational urges to go for those haircuts. Just go for it! It’ll look awesome! It looks great on Uma and it’ll look great on you! Nevermind the team of five stylists and a makeup artist that make it look that good! And even though you usually get up about seven and a half minutes before you actually have to leave you somehow convince yourself that you’ll give yourself the extra half hour to do your hair even though you regularly snooze your alarm every two minutes for an hour while blearily thinking how unfair it is that women have to look good while men can just roll out of bed and thanking god for the metrosexual trend because we shouldn’t be the only ones to have to deal with this bullshit—and you’re like, yeah, let’s try bangs!

When I’m rich and fabulous, I’m going to hire a live-in stylist.