My Teenage Sons Have Strong Feelings About My Bangs

Photo by Ryan McGuire on Pixabay.

As a woman of a certain age, I’m increasingly aware of my skin’s waning elasticity. I had lunch with an old friend once, and she said, “Your neck looks great. I’m obsessed with this area right now.” She wiped a hand down her neck to her collar bone. Neck? I’m not worried about my neck. It’s my forehead I’ve been staring at in the mirror, wondering what to do about it. So I did many middle-aged women who have not opted for Botox have done before me: I got bangs. This decision was not without controversy in my household.

I told my family my plan before the cut. I change hairstyles somewhat frequently (I must have inherited this from my mom). Look back on photos from the past twenty years and you’ll see my hair grow and shrink from my chin to below my shoulders. So over dinner, when I mentioned I had an appointment coming up, my husband asked what I was going to do.

(He asks only out of curiosity. “You’re beautiful no matter what you do,” he says, just like the perfect husband should.)

When I revealed my plan, he nodded. My middle son, however, immediately opposed. “Please don’t,” he said.

Please don’t. Like I was announcing my intention to serve squid and Brussel sprouts for dinner. Like I was doing something that would actually affect him. Why should he care? Do I reflect on him when I show up at soccer carpool pickup? Does anybody even look at moms?

Maybe most teenage boys don’t, but this one, he is very into style. He’s been particular about his own hair since he was young. For a long time, he wanted the front very long, then he went for the “TikTok fluffy hair,” and recently, started getting perms. So, to be fair, he truly has strong opinions about hair. And apparently, not only his own.

He told me I could get bangs if they were thick, parted bangs, a la Sabrina Carpenter. I didn’t want parted bangs—they would defeat the whole purpose of covering my forehead. They might even make it worse, drawing attention to the lines between the sweeping hair, like a stage curtain being pulled back to reveal what’s behind—the “elevens” between my eyebrows.

I rejected that plan and went ahead and got the bangs anyway. Unfortunately, I also had my stylist change my part to the middle and told her I wanted to start blowing my hair out and wearing it straight (it’s wavy), so the new look was shocking to all of us, including me. I did not leave the salon confident in my decisions.

I walked into the house. My perfect husband said nothing. My middle son looked up from the chair he was sitting in and merely shook his head. He couldn’t even put his contempt into words.

The next morning I washed my hair and tried the part back on the side, but with the bangs and straightened. It was still like a stranger was looking back at me from the mirror. That night, I washed it again and kept the side part but wore it wavy, with bangs. This was better but still kind of weird. How could bangs so completely change my look?

When we FaceTimed with our oldest at college on Sunday, he immediately asked, “What happened to your hair?”

“I got bangs,” I said.

“You look like every mom in every ‘80s movie ever.”

As someone born in the late ‘70s, ‘80s insults hit hard. I consider the ‘90s my decade, so things from the ‘80s have always been “out” in my estimation.

But at work, a co-worker complimented the new style. “It’s been very controversial,” I told her. “I haven’t made peace with the decision yet.”

She understood, having recently changed her hair color. This is something women can bond over.

I went home and told my middle son, “My co-worker likes the bangs.”

“Does she have bangs?”

“Yes,” I murmured, shamed by his logic. (It was true: other women with bangs were the first to comment on my new bangs. It's like the way Jeep Wrangler drivers always acknowledge one another. We are Bang Women.)

He merely nodded, his point made.

Teenage boys aren’t my target audience, I told myself. That would be...sick. At the same time, my middle son is the one I specifically asked to buy me new “fit” for Christmas, trusting he’d pick out something cool. So I do care about his opinion.

But less than I care about the wrinkles.

It took weeks, but I finally made peace with the bangs. One day I looked in the mirror and decided I liked them. They gave me the flexibility to pull some of my hair back or tuck it behind my ears. Hey! I had a reason to wear earrings again! The longer I had them, the more I appreciated them.

The bangs, I told myself at the beginning, were an experiment. If I didn’t like them, I would simply wait a month or two and start clipping them back, like they’d never been there. Instead, I called my stylist and made an appointment for a bang trim.