An event that has always been entertaining to me is when a person gets a major haircut. It really all comes down to the big Coming Out day, when everyone sees the new haircut for the first time. There are 4 types of responses:

Approval: “You got your haircut! Looks good, looks good.”
Simple Acknowledgement: “You got a haircut.”
Difference Acknowledgment: “Hey, you got a haircut. It’s different.”
Disapproval: “Who cut your hair? I liked it better the other way.”

There is a huge sense of irony in this collective effort of evaluating a person’s drastic haircut. I think about what it says regarding a person’s looks. The process in my mind: “If some people think I look better this way, and some think I looked better before, then I’m either really good-looking or really ugly.”

It’s hard to know which one. Or maybe a little bit of both. Who holds the answer? Probably the ones that use the Simple Acknowledgement Response. They know the truth, but they’re not saying anything. Like the mystery of the Orient.