Could 20 Inches (of Hair) Change Your Life? (2024)

To borrow a lede from an infinitely more talented journalist, I feel bad about my hair. Not every minute of every day—I do have a job, after all, and at least a couple of hobbies—but every time I get dressed to go out, I invariably find myself parked in front of the mirror 20 minutes after I was supposed to leave, cursing out loud and canceling my Uber as I desperately try to create a messy bun worthy of an effortlessly chic Parisian gallery owner out of my somewhat sparse, collarbone-length, often unwashed locks.

If I really felt bad about my hair, I guess I would probably expend a little more effort on it; as it stands, I get two cuts a year at Create Collective in Hudson, New York, supplemented by whatever trims and blow-dries my partner—a person infinitely more well groomed than I, with a rotation of stylists, colorists, and general freelance hair savants on speed dial—is able to coerce me into getting. My “signature hairstyle” is a messy topknot secured by whatever hair tie I manage to find at the bottom of my purse or scrounge off a friend; I’m the definition of “low-maintenance gay over 30,” at least when it comes to my ’do (if not my arsenal of disturbingly expensive skin products), so why have I found myself craving a little more hair drama lately? Didn’t every Herbal Essences commercial I watched my entire life teach me to dream of long, flowing locks that bewitched everyone in my path into falling in love with me?

Luckily for me, I work at Vogue, one of the few work environments in which it’s possible to test out a headful of entirely new hair for a single afternoon and not have everyone think you’re insane. When senior beauty and wellness editor Margaux Anbouba asked me if I wanted to try a long, luxurious 20-inch clip-in ponytail courtesy of Bellami and celebrity stylist Andrew Fitzsimons, I tugged ruefully at my short, boring-adjacent real hair and answered immediately: “Duh.”

Act 1: The Ponytail Installation

Once I got to the Bellami salon, I was startled to find that the ponytail Fitzsimons had selected for me—one of 22 different shade options—was almost the exact color of my natural locks, which I hadn’t dyed since an unfortunate dalliance with bleach in 2019 that left me with two-tone, half-blonde-half-brown hair for the first year of the COVID pandemic. That, plus the fact that I had opted for the “Everyday Lifestyle” ponytail as opposed to the four-inch-longer “Red Carpet Glamour” one, left me feeling confident about the results; as a borrowed-hair novice, I’d pictured something way more obviously fake, but this was real hair! Not my real real, but still! Someone’s, presumably!

Unsure of how to put myself together for an event that would include the labor of several professionals being diverted to making me hotter, I had opted for a simple Paloma wool T-shirt, linen pants, and Ganni sandals, all topped off with my favorite Fashion Brand Company denim coat; this outfit seemed reasonable when I left the house, but once the hair was fully in (a process that took about an hour but seemed much shorter, largely thanks to the free Champagne and Fitzsimons’s preternatural ability to chat pleasantly while working), I felt slightly bereft. An updo like this clearly required a sequined dress and sky-high stiletto heels, or at least a complicated corset top of some kind, even if it was 4 p.m. on a Wednesday. Had I already failed in my quest to achieve Maximum Femme Impact?

Act 2: The Ponytail Experiment

The smile you see on my face in this photo is all too real; I couldn’t stop grinning once all six bajillion individual hairs were clipped into my head, thinking back to what I looked like when I’d actually had waist-length hair—we’re talking girl-recently-rescued-from-backwoods-cult vibes, with a whole lot of split ends going on—and exulting in how shiny and healthy my faux ponytail (fauxnytail?) was.

As I looked in the mirror, I was immediately pierced with a new sympathy for Emily T., a girl in my third-grade class who pulled the head off of my favorite Barbie after I (accidentally, I think?) got gum in her long, flowing curls at recess. Anyone who messed with my fauxnytail would meet a similar fate to my long-ago Barbie, I vowed as I swished my locks back and forth and wished I’d at least brought a lipstick with me to the salon. Suddenly, I was Barbie herself, or someone even more powerful; Ariana Grande in her peak ponytail era, sucking beguilingly on a lollipop as the world admired me.

My first act as a newly be-ponytailed woman was to meet my friend Julie for happy hour at an oyster bar we both love in Silver Lake. Julie has known me for roughly 10 years and isn’t generally accustomed to my showing up places looking like a very sleek and debonair My Little Pony, but she rolled with it quickly as I divulged the details of my afternoon. “I feel so…straight?” I confessed over appetizers as I finger-combed my new locks, knowing full well that I was being reductive and that plenty of my fellow members of the LGBTQ+ community had long, flowing hair (I love you, long-haired butches!), but still unable to conceive of myself as someone whose hair practically needed to file its own taxes. As if to prove my point, a boring-looking white guy in chinos who was strongly giving Sex and the City boyfriend-of-the-week smiled at me as I waited for my drink, and the hot bartender who normally ignores me let me plug my dying phone into his behind-the-bar charger. Men; all you have to do is no longer exclusively date them (and sit for a quick waist-length ponytail installation) and they’re all yours!

Act 3: The Ponytail Aftermath

Okay, harsh truth time: As stunning and realistic as these hair extensions are, I simply do not live a life worthy of them. Despite all my attempts to scare up last-minute weeknight plans that would allow me to whip my hair all over Los Angeles, I ended up getting drunk on lemon drops in my pajamas in my partner’s living room as we engaged in our ritual of “slot machine L Word” (a.k.a. just watching random episodes of the show that we remember, out of order) and ate a frankly stunning amount of Chinese takeout.

Should I have taken my long, luxurious ponytail out to the club, or at least to Stud Country? Probably, but I’m here to tell you that there’s something wonderful about watching TV in your sweatpants while 100 grams of human hair sit glamorously (and somewhat heavily) atop your scalp; I felt like a celebrity wearing her couture gown to In-N-Out after the Oscars, and even drunkenly taking out half the extensions and falling asleep in just a few clipped-in strands of human hair that did not belong to me (not to mention waking up to find them completely snarled into my real hair) could not dim my shine. The next day, as I carefully wrapped up my clip-in ponytail and put it under my bathroom sink for safekeeping, I couldn’t help feeling a glimmer of appreciation for my real hair; yes, it’s short and boring, and yes, I could stand to do a little more with it, but honestly, do I really want men in chinos to be aware of me?