Late last week, my nine year-old daughter went from this:

To this:

Locks of Love requires the ponytail be a minimum of ten inches long for donation. To be on the safe side, my daughter had eleven inches taken off.

I can’t say it was a decision made entirely out of altruism. She wanted to make a donation for quite some time, but whenever we measured what would be cut off, she chickened out because what would be left on her head would be too short. But, last week she decided the long hair was interfering with her martial arts. In the end, comfort trumped vanity. She had tried all manner of hair restraint techniques, but each ponytail, bun and braid had some unforgivable flaw–it flops in my face when I do this, mom (picture her doing some bizarre thing that nobody actually goes around doing), or—look, when I bend back like this, then see, it pokes me in the back of the neck and that hurts. So, when she committed to the decision to cut it off, we ran straight to the salon before she lost her nerve.

The end result is adorable. She looks a lot like that girl in Because of Winn Dixie now. She was thrilled with it, primping it and putting it in different barrettes and ribbons when we got home. We knew she’d get a reaction from people the next day, but we weren’t prepared for what kind of reaction she’d get.

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