This Is Why You Want To Change Your Hair During Quarantine

Perhaps one of the most noticeable aspects of corona culture has been everyone's desire to try something new while staying safe (and stuck) at home. New recipes, new hobbies like gardening and chicken-farming, new babies (oh wait, not quite yet), and a whole raft of offbeat new products like, umm, burrito-themed makeup kits? (OK, millennial.)

And, of course, everybody's seemingly got a whole new quarantine look. While many of us are opting for a low-maintenance, not-leaving-the-house-anyway style involving sweatpants and messy hair (Rachael Ray is our celebrity spokesperson), others are opting for more dramatic changes in appearance, a la Sex and the City's Chris Noth and his new chrome dome. While not everyone is opting to go completely hair-free, a change in color may well be in the works. 

Some celebs like Pink and Ariana Grande are ditching the dyes and styling products, but others, like Hilary Duff, are opting for more of an Easter egg effect with brightly-colored locks. Seems like plenty of us less famous folks are also opting for DIY dye jobs since hair dye was one of the items that saw a surge in sales due to panic-buying in those early pandemic days. As to why we're suddenly going hair-crazy, science (well, social science) has an answer for that.

Elite Daily notes that new hairstyles symbolizes change — hence the whole post-breakup new 'do cliché. Behavioral scientist Clarissa Silva explains: "When we cut our hair for the purposes of change, psychologically, we are experiencing a rebirth," and calls the act of cutting (or, presumably dyeing) your hair as being symbolic of hope that you can heal from past hurt and attract new circumstances. Well, yeah, kinda got a pandemic going on here — new circumstances are definitely in order.

Popsugar also examined the phenomenon of everyone's need for a change in hairstyle, and they, too, called in experts to put in their two dollars' worth (adjusted for inflation). Clinical psychologist Morgan Francis, LPC, walks us through the thought process that may lie behind a sudden urge to snip: "With everything being so out of control and so uncertain, this is something I can control, I can control how I want my hair to look." 

Clinical psychologist Dr. Christie Ferrari agrees that "Cutting our hair or changing our physical appearance...can be seen as a common reaction to a stressful event," since not only does it allow us to exert control, but it may also be seen as a way we can grow through adversity and come out of the quarantine looking even better than we did before... or not. But what the hey, it's not like you've got anywhere to go 'til the hair salons open again, so go ahead and experiment.