Locks of Love: A Great Reason to Get a Hot Haircut

On my list of all-time most annoying things in the entire world, having long hair ranks right up there with people who purposely screech their fingernails on chalkboards and drivers who cut you off and then give you the finger.

I don’t mind long hair on other people (especially guys, ‘cuz that’s hot). I mind long hair on me. My hair is so unimaginably thick that any significant length just makes it fall flat and stick to my skull. I once tried to get a perm, but my hair was flat again within an hour. How screwed up is that?

Plus, I’m a low-maintenance kind of girl, and I just don’t have the patience for long hair. It takes forever to shampoo and condition, and brushing it in the morning takes 30 seconds that I could really spend doing something else (sadly, I’m serious).

So since about the age of 12, I’ve never had hair longer than shoulder-length. Too much work! I’ve known about Locks of Love for a while, but I just figured I’d never have hair long enough to be able to donate.

Locks of Love, for those of you not familiar with it, is a charity organization that uses hair donations to fashion cool hairpieces for children who are bald or losing their hair for a variety of medical reasons. It’s a great cause, and the kids really appreciate the hairpieces.

Unfortunately, you have to chop off at least 10 full inches of hair to donate. You can have layered hair with 10 inches being the length of the longest layer, but still, that’s a lot of hair.

Well, somehow, through a crazy fluke that involved me not getting my hair cut for two years, I had about nine inches of hair to spare near the end of this past year. Since I was so close to the minimum donation length for Locks of Love, I decided to suffer through the maintenance and grow it out until it was long enough to donate.

I am so glad I did. I feel fantastic for helping such a worthy cause, and my new haircut is freaking amazing. I look good. And there’s not only that—if you donate to Locks of Love, many nice salons will give you a great cut for free. Mine did, and that haircut wouldn’t have come cheap otherwise.

So if you’ve got some length to spare, think about Locks of Love. You’ll be making a kid happy and giving yourself a hot new look, and there’s no better combination than that.