Why I Grew Out My Hair
Posted by Taylor White on Sunday, December 6, 2015
cutoff
If you’ve seen me in the last sixth months (June 2015 – December 2015) then you’ve likely taken notice of my long locks.
I want to talk about my journey of growing out my hair, and the decisions behind it. Upon graduating from college I joined a company that puts significant emphasis on merit. It is, for all intensive purposes, a meritocracy. This was a key factor in deciding which company I wanted to work at. Working at a meritocracy gives you freedom. I could come in to work tomorrow with my ear pierced, and because I work at a meritocracy, my prospects of being promoted throughout the company go unaffected. If I wanted to leave midday to run an errand, I could because it doesn’t impact the outcome of my work. This kind of culture is what is known as a ROWE.
ROWE Results Only Work Environment
Epic really isn’t a ROWE in its purest sense:
- You have to live within 45 minutes of the company.
A ROWE would allow employees to live anywhere, provided they deliver the required results.
- You must come to work to do your work
Again, a ROWE would allow any behavior as long as the results are good.
Even though it’s not a true ROWE, there is a huge emphasis put on merit, and you can see people with pink hair rise through the ranks of the company–something that you wouldn’t see in your typical Fortune 500–because they have delivered on their work.
So the main reason I chose to grow my hair out, is that I thought it would be interesting to see what it’s like having long hair. The second is that working at Epic is one of my few opportunities in my life to grow out my hair and have a look that significantly deviates from the “norm” without my career being affected. For that I am grateful.
If you think “but Taylor, long hair shouldn’t affect your career!” then you’d be correct. But it does. Take for instance, the job of President of the United States. This is arguably one of the highest accomplishments and at the very least a career goal that many would like to achieve. Let’s look at all 44 presidents that have occupied the Oval Room:
Presidents of the United States of America
In the 240 years the nation has been in existence, not a single President has had long hair, not a single one!
So it does affect your career. Unsurprisingly I am an avid tech fan, and one of the things I most distinctly remember when participating in / watching Engadget’s live-blogging of the Windows Phone announcement was Joe Belfiore’s hair. It was all everyone talked about in the comments for the first five minutes he was on stage. Even today, when it looks significantly shorter and better than it was in the days of the first Windows Phone launch, comments on his hair significantly detract from the content of the video.
I just scrolled through a few of the comments:
Not pretty. The short of it is, how you present yourself has a significant effect on others’ opinions of you and the message you are trying to send. The short hair, trimmed look tends to say, I care about my career and I am putting positive foot forward. Long hair does not give that same impression.
Nevertheless I went for it. And to my company’s credit, I was promoted even when having hair that looks like a poorly built bird’s nest.
- I’ve always wanted see what it was like
- I work at a company where it doesn’t matter much
- I’m young so even if it did matter, my career would recover
- To be Thor for Halloween
What It’s Like Having Long Hair
The Bad
Awful. I wrote about my desire to have long hair back in 2014, and was advised against it from a few friends:
Yes Facebook friends, people of the world, I have decided to for the first time grow my hair out–so this will be me next October: Although perhaps slightly less dashing.
Posted by Taylor White on Wednesday, October 1, 2014
The first comment to roll in:
And he’s certainly correct. Having long hair is difficult. Here are a few things I particularly struggled with:
- Shaving
Shaving my face was all sorts of difficult. Anytime I wanted to get at a different side of my beard I would have to whip my hair around to the other side of my face, hold it there and then shave. Like clockwork a hair would get in the way and I would effectively shave off three+ inches of part of my hair each night.
- Showering
Showering has a number of problems associated with it:
- Clogging the drain. Several times I had to snake the drain to unclog it from all my hair. Nasty.
- Wet hair. Wet hair takes soooo long to dry! I can’t believe what a pain that is. If I want to go to an event and need to shower beforehand, the days of showering beforehand are long gone. With long hair you’ve got to allow for at least 45 minutes of dry time.
- Conditioner. If you’re going to have long hair, you need to have conditioner. I finally found out what that is and why its used.
- Knots. Hair can actually get into knots around itself. Who knew?! It’s a pain, and my girlfriend insisted on unknotting them, with the vicious brute force method of combing them out. I lost lots of good hairs on those days.
- Hairs everywhere!
Having long hair, I wonder how we have any hair at all. With the hairs going down the shower, the hairs I accidentally shave off, the hairs Audrey viciously yanks from my head and the hairs that I find across the house, it’s amazing we have any hairs left at all.
- Sight.
Maybe it was that my hair was never quite long enough, but hair always fell into my eyes. It was very annoying. I could push it behind my ear, but ultimately it would eventually fall out, and into my face. I found myself constantly pushing it out of the way or man-bunning it up.
- It sets you apart, you stand out with long hair.
- It feels very natural, very “right”.
- It looks good (hopefully!).
The Good
Having long hair sets you apart. In the sea of Joe Schmoe(s) and John Doe(s) there’s only a few Fabio’s (I’m thinking of the model with the super long hair). It’s a point of conversation at times and random people will just make comments about it. So it definitely does not go unnoticed which can be fun.
It also simply is freeing. I felt very animalistic with long hair. I would have odd thoughts that I was like a character from Game of Thrones. Obviously I’m not, I don’t even watch Game of Thrones, but having long hair felt more natural than having short hair. It felt like this is how humans are supposed to look.
Lastly, it can look good!
Check out my Winter 2015 album to see a few shots of my hair when its long, including when I dressed as Thor for Halloween:
The fateful season where I lost my hair
Posted by Taylor White on Sunday, November 1, 2015
by Taylor