I need to tell you about the haircut filter situation before it eats me alive. This is a confession post. I'm confessing because TikTok's haircut filters are still trending and I have firsthand evidence of why they are dangerous in the hands of a sleep-deprived indie musician at 2 a.m. with scissors that are technically for fabric but could probably do the job.
I did not cut my hair. I want to say that upfront. But I thought about it with a conviction usually reserved for people who have actually made good decisions. And it wasn't even the first time. There was an incident last spring with the bangs. That story ends fine but it ends with a very sincere phone call to my friend at 11 p.m. saying "please talk me out of this" and her saying "put the scissors down, Rae" in the tone of someone who has been here before.
She has been here before. So have I. We apparently learn nothing.
How the Haircut Filter Gets You
Nobody tells you this about haircut filters: they work too well. You open the filter fully expecting it to look ridiculous and then you're looking at yourself with a blunt bob or a shag cut or yes, god help you, heavy curtain bangs, and it looks good? It looks possible? Your brain does this thing where it forgets that the filter has done about nine thousand dollars of work in terms of lighting and jaw contouring. It shows you only the haircut, not the reality of you crying in your bathroom mirror three months later growing it back out.
I've been posting about this on TikTok and the comments are full of people who made the mistake and people who almost made the mistake and people currently holding scissors. It's a whole support group under the haircut filter trend. We are all in this together.
The other night I got sucked in around 2 a.m. I'd been tracking vocals for a couple hours and my voice was giving out so I stopped, made tea, opened TikTok meaning to be on it for five minutes. The haircut filter videos were everywhere. I held my phone up. I tried the shag. I tried the pixie. I TRIED THE UNDERCUT, which, to be fair, I think about roughly once a month anyway. And then I tried the curtain bangs and I sat there for about four minutes staring at the screen like an idiot.
I did not call my friend this time. I put the phone down and went to bed. Progress.
The Bangs Incident of Last Spring: A Full Account
Okay. Here is what actually happened with the bangs.
It was March. wait, maybe late February. doesn't matter. I was in a recording spiral, one of those weeks where you're making real progress but you've also been in the same four hundred square feet for so many consecutive hours that your judgment has softened like old fruit. I had been watching YouTube videos about curtain bangs specifically and then the filter confirmed that yes, on my face, with my bone structure, it would look great. And I thought: I can do this. I know where the scissors are. I've watched three videos. How hard is this?
My friend answered on the second ring, bless her. I said "I'm about to give myself bangs." She said "where are you right now." I said "bathroom." She said "are you holding something." I said "fabric scissors." She said "Rae." Just my name, in that specific tone. And something in my exhausted brain received the signal and stood down.
I went and got curtain bangs professionally done two weeks later. They look great. They required approximately four months of disciplined growing-out before they started looking like the filter version instead of a regret. The stylist confirmed that fabric scissors would have been, and I quote, "a disaster situation." I thanked her sincerely.
Red Hair Is Not Just a Color, It's a Whole Commitment
Here's why the hair stuff hits differently for me than it probably does for most people: I'm a redhead. Natural redhead, not the sandy kind, the actual traffic-light red kind that people stop me about in grocery stores. And red hair is not just a physical trait when you're a musician. it's load-bearing. It's doing structural work.
I know that sounds like I'm being dramatic. stick with me.
When I was growing up in the church, red hair on a girl was complicated. There was this undercurrent of "fiery" as a warning rather than a compliment. Like the hair itself was evidence of a personality type that needed managing. I was told more than once, more than ten times honestly, that I needed to learn to be "softer." The hair was never explicitly mentioned but it always felt adjacent to the conversation. It was part of what made me "a lot."
When I moved to the city and started playing music seriously, I realized that the same trait that made me "too much" in that context made me exactly enough in this one. The hair is part of the visual language, it says something before I play a single note. It says: I am not going to be easy. I am not going to be quiet. I am not going to be soft in the way you want me to be soft. It sets an expectation that the music then has to live up to, which I find motivating rather than pressuring.
So when I open a haircut filter and consider changing it, what I'm really doing, what I finally understood during the fabric scissors incident, is considering editing a part of myself that is actually on purpose. It's not just a haircut. It's a statement about whether I'm still all-in on the version of me I'm currently building.
The 2 A.M. Impulse and What It's Usually Actually About
I've talked to enough people about this that I think I have a theory. The 2 a.m. haircut impulse is almost never really about the hair. it's a displacement activity. The brain looking for something it can control when everything else, the creative work, the future, the record you're making that isn't finished yet, the songs that aren't right yet, feels uncertain and untouchable.
You can't fast-forward a recording session. You can't make a lyric land by wanting it to bad enough. You can't schedule your own creative breakthrough. But you CAN pick up a pair of scissors and have a completely different head of hair in fifteen minutes and there is a version of your brain, specifically the version that comes online at 2 a.m. after three hours of layering vocals, that finds this extremely compelling.
The haircut filter is basically a portal to that version of yourself. It says: look how easy change is. Look how fast. Your whole face, different, just like that. And what you're really hearing underneath it is: this thing you're struggling with could be different too. You could just fix it. Right now. At 2 a.m.
You cannot fix a song by cutting your hair. I have tested this hypothesis and the data is not in hair's favor.
what I do instead (sometimes)
I'm not going to pretend I have this solved. I still open the filter. I still sometimes stare at a possible version of myself with a shag cut or a blunt bob and feel the pull. But I've gotten better at recognizing what the pull is actually about, and that recognition puts about three seconds of distance between the impulse and the action.
Three seconds is enough, usually. In those three seconds I try to ask: is this about the hair, or is it about the song you're stuck on? Is it about wanting to look different, or about wanting to feel like you made something happen? Because if it's the second one, there are better options. I can go back into the session and try one more take. I can make a voice memo of the lyric that's been eluding me. I can make actual tea instead of forgetting the tea I already made and letting it get cold on my desk, which is what I do about sixty percent of the time.
The red hair stays. The record I'm working on is going to be the thing that changes. That's the deal I've made with myself. Stability in the packaging, chaos in the work. reasonable division of labor.
I also want to say: I get why the filters are addictive even beyond the creative-block displacement theory. They're portals into alternate selves and humans are wired to be interested in alternate selves. Who would I have been if I'd grown up somewhere different, made different choices, looked different? The filter gives you a quick consequence-free answer to a version of that question. There's nothing wrong with being curious about it. The problem is only when the curiosity tips into action at 2 a.m. with improper scissors. Keep the curiosity, put down the scissors, and for the love of everything go to an actual professional if you decide you want a real change. Your hair deserves better than a sleep-deprived musician with fabric shears and a theory.
And if you're currently reading this at 2 a.m. holding a pair of scissors, put them down. Text a friend. Make tea. I promise the song will still be there tomorrow. So will your hair, unaltered, exactly the way it's supposed to be.