Donating My Hair

Over the first weekend in April my college hosted its own Relay For Life and at the event I decided to donate my hair.

So this is my hair straightened and before I cut it all off. I decided to donate my hair for a few reasons. My hair grows really fast, so I wasn't worried about being 'stuck' with short hair for a little while, especially if it was going to a good cause. But more than that, I feel like hair is such a big part of who we are. Don't get me wrong, my natural hair is the biggest pain in the butt. It's uncontrollable, frizzy, and unpredictable, but it's mine. I feel like if I didn't have any hair I would definitely lack self-confidence, so donating my hair to be turned into a wig for people who actually don't have hair was worth it.

So The American Cancer Society has a partnership with Pantene Beautiful Lengths, which donates wigs to women who have lost their hair due to cancer treatments. What I like about the organization is that the hair loss doesn't need to be permanent for a woman to quality for a wig. What I had to do was get my hair into ponytails with an elastic above and below where the cut was going to be. The more ponytails the more even the cut, but by the time I got my hair sectioned off there weren't many elastics left.

Like I said, I couldn't have my ponytail sectioned off as many times as I would have liked, and my hair is really thick, so when my friend cut off the ponytails it wasn't an even cut at all. I'm not sure if you can tell from this photo, but just trust me.

But thankfully they had some volunteers who could even out the haircuts.

And so this is what my hair looked like when I woke up later that day (Relay went from 6pm-4am) and my mom called it adorable, so what else do I need to say? Honestly, I currently like it a lot better straight than I like it curly. For my own preference it's too short when it's curly, but I know it will grow soon enough. I definitely do not regret my decision to donate my hair and I would recommend anyone to do it. Many people express themselves throughout their hair, so being able to give someone that opportunity is a really nice gesture almost anyone with long enough hair can do.