There are two kinds of post-breakup girls: the ones who sob into pints of ice cream, and the ones who immediately cut their hair off. I became the second kind.
Not right away, of course. First came the crying, then the overanalyzing, and then the moment I caught my reflection and felt. . . embarrassed. Embarrassed that I had stayed and contorted myself to keep someone who didn’t deserve me. I didn’t want to look like her — the girl who tolerated too much, who knew it wasn’t right but stayed anyway. So I booked a haircut.
There’s something uniquely clarifying about a post-breakup haircut. It’s not always about becoming someone new. Sometimes, it’s just about honoring the version of you that’s already beginning to emerge. When your heart is bruised and your sense of self feels shaky, changing your hair becomes a small but powerful act of control. It helps you mark an ending, even if you’re not totally sure what comes next. And for many of us, it’s the first decision we make solely for ourselves in a long time, and that alone can feel like progress.
Sometimes, it’s just about honoring the version of you that’s already beginning to emerge.
For me, I didn’t ask for an impulsive set of bangs or a dramatic new shade. It was the opposite, actually. I stripped the artificial red color I clung to throughout our relationship (the color he loved) and went blond. I added layers and chopped it shorter. I wanted to feel like myself again, but not the version of me who had been there before. Someone older, wiser, and who wasn’t bending over backwards to be easy to love.
I’m far from the only woman who’s turned to scissors in the aftermath of heartbreak. Getting your heart broken into a million tiny pieces is a nearly universal experience, so it makes sense that the breakup haircut is, too. There’s a reason haircut scenes are a staple in breakup storylines. In “Gilmore Girls,” Rory gets a bob after breaking up with Dean. In “Sex and the City,” Carrie chops her hair post-Aidan. Keri Russell’s iconic pixie cut on “Felicity” came right after her split from Ben (“I wasn’t doing it for a guy, I was doing it for me!”). And in “Sliding Doors,” Gwyneth Paltrow’s character goes full blond pixie the moment her relationship crumbles.
The screen, of course, mirrors reality. Jessica Simpson debuted a sharp bob post-divorce. Selena Gomez went from long brunette waves to a chic bob after her breakup with Justin Bieber. Taylor Swift went peroxide blond after ending things with Calvin Harris. Khloé Kardashian chopped and lightened her hair after divorcing Lamar Odom. Reese Witherspoon got blunt bangs after leaving Ryan Phillippe. Ariana Grande, Sarah Hyland, Katy Perry, Kristen Stewart — the list goes on and on. These cuts capture something familiar: the shared instinct to look in the mirror and see a physical sign that you’re moving forward.
I won’t pretend I loved the haircut forever. Looking back, I actually don’t think short hair (or blond color) suited me that well. But in the moment, it didn’t matter. What I loved was how healthy it looked and felt — shiny, soft, finally free of the breakage and over-processed dye I’d held onto for years. I kept running my hands through it because it felt like someone new. Someone I’d been trying to become for a long time.
That’s the real power of a breakup haircut. Not reinvention for reinvention’s sake, but the first visible sign that you’ve survived something. A reset, not to who you were before them, but to who you’re becoming now: Someone healthier, inside and out.
Olivia Tauber is a freelance writer based in New York, pursuing her Master’s in Journalism at NYU. She’s the contributing assistant beauty editor at PopSugar and contributor to New York Magazine’s The Cut, Interview, Bustle, SELF, and HuffPost. Her career began in corporate publicity at Showtime, followed by production for “The Pivot,” an Emmy-nominated series.
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