I’m going to have to endorse the surprised silence method personally. At least for Little Miss “Don’t Worry It’ll Grow Back”.
Once upon a time I had hair to my knees. Curly hair to my knees. I have an emphatic hand gesture for anyone who thinks I should keep hair like that because “men hate short hair”. Yes, that hand gesture. My hair now is by no means short, but Mary, Mother of God knee length curly hair is an unbelievable hassle to care for. Just keeping it clean and groomed sucked up an hour of my day - not counting styling. Just the washing and brushing part. It was impossible to shower in less than half an hour, took huge amounts of water to wash and rinse, needed to be washed and rinsed daily, was heavy, and it’s not like anyone got to touch or even see the damn stuff. With really long hair, you keep it up. I have close friends and relatives who (until I whacked it off) had never seen me with my hair down. Braided, bunned, under a hat, wrapped, something. You can’t even really pull it into a pony tail. The pony tail still falls to the middle of the thighs or so. That doesn’t help much with the tangling, getting caught in doors, clothing, being sat on (sometimes by other people), getting into food and beverages (sometimes belonging to other people), and let me assure you getting knee-length hair caught in a revolving door is not something to be repeated. You can’t bend down or even over a little without it dragging on the floor - hell, you can’t sit down without it dragging on the floor.
God forbid the wind should blow - or there should be a fan. Fans were the bane of my existence.
And let’s not talk about all the jackasses who, should I choose to wear it down, felt it was their right and privilege to pet me without permission.
Plus in my case, it was a fairly improbable color of dark red. Thanks for that Grandma. It was my natural color, but damned if anyone would believe me - and they’d get quite incensed when I wouldn’t tell them my “secret”. And you can’t dye hair that length. Just… no.
Hell when I went in to get it cut, I couldn’t even get a stylist to touch it. I had to take the scissors, whack off three or four feet myself and then tell them to tidy up the rest.
I’m glad it’s gone. Never again, folks, never again.
Maybe it was pretty (I didn’t really think so, personally), but it was also well past inconvenient into worthlessness.
Plus, the people from Locks of Love were all kinds of excited about it. I think they made like three wigs from me alone.