I, for one, like it.

Radical women, and lesbians especially, have been doing it for at least long as I've known about radical women and lesbians, and I'm confident that it was going on prior to my knowlege. Not to suggest that she's radical or a lesbian, but my best guess is these women are among her biggest support in this moment. This solitary moment.

Even the most subjected person has moments of rage and resentment so intense that they respond, they act against. There is an inner uprising that leads to rebellion, however short lived. It may be only momentary but it takes place. That space within oneself where resistance is possible remains.

-bell hooks

Fine. She's not quite the most subjected person that hooks speaks of. Ah, the beauty of taking quotations out of context... most subjected person turns into Britney Spears in the whirl of a paragraph. Speaking of Britney...shears, anyone? (The New York Post couldn't resist temptation to pun around with Britney's new look, but they never can, so I'll leave the kitch to the news and move along.)

The haircut was more complicated than a common fashion statement. This may seem obvious to the feminist theorists among us, but the rest of us who focus on diet pills and Anna Nicole Smith's inclusive sex life might attempt to keep it in mind when viewing photographs of her shiny dome juxtaposed images of slippery children. Britney exploded into a closed barber shop and demanded that Someone Shave My Head Right Now. This is after she quit rehab, surviving one lonely (sober) day. Which was after photographs of her open legs (sans panties) erupted into wider culture. Idaho. New Jersey. Hong Kong. Puerto Vallerta even. At the end of a very public conclusion to an obstreperous marriage. In her mid-twenties. After having two children. Both boys. Twenty-Four. Past her absent teens, puberty, and age-appropriate rebellion due to work responsibilites that began in the Mickey Mouse Club at age ten. Imagine ten. Boogers and chocolate milk.

Never before have I given serious considerations into Britney Spears' life. She doesn't ponder over mine, right? But am I contemplating her life? The alleged life of a country girl pummeled with money and dropped into Los Angeles of all places? Or am I talking about myself? I'm not sure why the New York Post as well as the Daily News decided to put photographs of Britney's hair cutting ritual on their covers. I'm not sure how this experience trumps killings in Iraq, discussions about increased deaths caused by Americans and their leaders in Iran, or the forbidden sale of generic life saving pharmacudical drugs in impoverished areas. I'm not sure why anyone decided that this story would sell newspapers, and I'm not sure why it does. I am sure that two years ago, when I needed a major life change, I started with my hair.

I woke up early. Seven, maybe. Eight probably. I looked at the person I was sleeping with and decided to rip out my dredlocks, hair by hair. Believe it or don't. It can be done. I swear. It took me nineteen hours. I sat on the floor of my living room and started pulling. I put my finger in the teeny space at the top of the lock where the hair hasn't quite committed yet. I put another finger in that same hole, made it bigger. Then I pulled the two fingers apart, ripping the lock in half. Hear it? Like ice scraping off a windshield. Then I made another hole at the top of the half-lock. Tore the half-lock into a quarter-lock. And so on. I didn't eat. I didn't smoke. I didn't move from my crosslegged spot on the floor. Hair collected around me. Huge piles of hair that couldn't fall to the ground when it let go of my scalp three years prior because it was bound to the lock. Six years of energy built into locks that form naturally when allowed, torn to fragile bits of vulnerability. I'm glad the paparazzi missed the show.

Britney wasn't so lucky.

Women know about hair in ways that don't occur to men. "Your hair is your crown," my grandmother used to say. "What have you done to your hair??," my mother said. "Look at her hair!," from the girls who wanted to hurt my feelings. Our hair matters. Our hair helps define a woman's social location in a complicated strata involving age, race, length, color, buoyancy, and smell. We don't rip it out. We don't cut it off. We definitely don't shave it. We love it. We style it. We trim it. We adjust it, we color it. If it's in the wrong place, we get rid of it. If it's in the right place, we embellish it. And if we refuse? If we toss the hair-rules to the circular file and demand someone yank it out or cut it off and sell it on ebay? We have gone and lost our mind. If we happen to be a well known twenty-four year old masturbation fantasy with big tits and a curvy ass who doesn't wear underwear when she parties at clubs with Paris Hilton, and we dare to ditch our hair? Tsk. Don't even.

Well I, for one, like it.

I appreciate it. Good for you, girl. What'd she say? Don't touch me. I'm tired of people touching me. Well go ahead then, mama. It's just hair. It'll grow back. Mine did.