Earlier this spring, needs-no-introduction icon Rihanna and I, who are the editors of lowly fashion and beauty, had the exact same idea at about the same time: Maybe I should get bangs.

I don't know why Fenty mogul debuted her dull blonde bangs on May 4. I can only speak for myself. My entire Instagram feed and what feels like half of Hollywood has gone the fringe route, persuading me by sheer exposure to join in these days.

Here is a long, but non-exhaustive, list of celebrities who chopped hair straight across the forehead and persuaded me to book a haircut in the process. Zendaya clipped with bangs in her honey gold ponytail to stop at the Challengers Tour in London. Julia Roberts and Anne Hathaway have added feathery fringe to their long brunette curls for the recent press, while Kelly Washington, Ashley Graham and Sydney Sweeney have tried out bangs of different textures and lengths at the 2024 Met Gala. (Sweeney's, we now know, was a wig.At last week's Cannes Film Festival, Michelle Yeoh arrived on the carpet with fresh blonde bangs to complement her off-the-run way Balenciaga outfit. Selena Gomez also appeared in Cannes, where she brushed and curled long curtain bangs on both sides of her red carpet ponytail.

It's not just celebrities who are obsessed with face framing cuts. Hair stylists and online beauty outlets call spring the season of "Bardot bangs"."When I finally went to the Davida salon on the upper East Side of Manhattan to try them out for myself (and, but suspiciously, for journalism), my Stye

bangs had enough moments to make me wonder if celebrities could defeat the worst claims against them forever." It's a great place to start. You've heard a joke: When someone gets bangs, a certain corner of pop culture says, there's something wrong with the person who got them, or they're grounds for immediate regret. In 2013, then-First Lady Michelle Obama called her bangs a sign of a "midlife crisis.""Then there's Emily's titular Emily in Paris, who whipped her scissors and gave herself a haircut friend for the rest of the latest season" Trau

"Traumatic bangs" as the term is used to describe a strategist・like site from Cindy Crawford's haircut test on Instagram instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrams. I have been wriggling its way everywhere on the review of bun trimming scissors on the site instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrammed instagrams. Emily Henry romantic comedy at the top of this month's New York Times bestseller list, with funny stories, Bangs is the butt of an off-hand joke between a brave hero and her colleagues. "I get sick of having bangs 4 days after I get them," she says. "Well," her friend replies, "That's the guys.""

As soon as I noticed the increase in Van haircuts, the examples of their detractors began to play with a mental loop in my mind. I started to worry about how getting bangs would quietly tell me even though I really wanted them. People would look at my new haircut and think I was divorced or flailing professionally. If someone poised like Michelle Obama once regretted her bangs, is the bangs a harbinger of internal fate, surely there was no hope for me to love me.

Still, before I sit in a stylist's chair, crowdsourcing to Instagram stories for feedback from recent inductors into society wearing bangs Maybe if people outside Hollywood are actually getting them and feel good, I can rest assured.

About thirty fashion colleagues and long-lost college classmates responded to my outreach, ready to gush (and defend) their haircuts. A friend in Paris said that she just got a chop and could not imagine her face without it from the other side. Washington, D.C.C.Another said that her wife began to prefer her bangs over her previous hairstyle.

Fashion editor Cortne Bonilla describes the bangs she recently adopted as "a sign that I'm back to my most authentic self." "After the Covid pandemic and growing them at her wedding, Bonilla looked in the mirror and didn't realize well who she saw. When she brought back all the old haircuts, bangs and so on, a friend said she "looked like herself again.""

Trauma or regret"Some respondents to my informal survey said they'd kept the bangs secret before the chop, worried that it would be interpreted as a sign, but on the other side, the most of the pocket questions received by friends were whether she intended to copy longtime bang・wearer Taylor Swift. It was a great experience.

All these conversations reinforced what I already wanted: bangs are really just a haircut, not a license to sanity check. Why assume the chop is reactionary"There are only 1 reasoning to make when someone gets the bangs: they like the style enough to wear it, otherwise they will say so (and change it).

This is not to say that bangs are not always emotionless and trend-driven as in my case. Aura Friedman, a prominent hair colorist and stylist I contacted for extra-bang advice, shepherded clients like Zoß Kravitz and SooJoo Park through dramatic colour and length changes. "Sometimes [dramatic haircuts] are regeneration and reinvention," she tells me. "We all deserve the grace to flow, evolve and adjust. We also deserve the grace of having the ability to express ourselves through hair, clothes and fashion — it's fun."

I didn't necessarily need regeneration, but I was confident enough that I heard to get the haircut I wanted. So I finally walked into the salon just around the corner from my Manhattan apartment with some reference images—Julia, Anne, Daisy Edgar Jones, Dakota Johnson-and the promise that I wouldn't let my stylist, Michelle, talk me out of it.

No lingering worries were unnecessary: Michelle actually asked why I didn't think of bangs much earlier. By the end of our time together, she cut, cut and blow-dried the once long ones, hair parted on the side bra the top of my eyelids I usually have a stone face on a salon chair, but I was smiling at us all the time in the mirror. How the bangs drew attention to my eyes, and how they're the slanted nature of the 70s of my Doo endless-filled vintage-inspired wardrobe, how can I care if anyone thought this cut was a sign of crisis"I just cut my hair for the thrill of it."

It's been weeks since I first took stock of all the women getting bangs this spring and joined them. If I say so, the reaction was quite positive. My husband told me they are cute and my friend said they fit naturally. If they are lying, they are doing it well.

My bangs are not as shiny as Rihanna and not evenly distributed like Anne Hathaway. But when they cooperate, I love them. (All credits for Good Bang Day belong to my Dyson Air Wrap and Crown Affair Dry Shampoo.More importantly, I don't regret them a bit.

Defeating trauma allegations requires time, exposure, and a good attitude when people ask me what I had to pick up scissors — they actually said what every daughter who has a new haircut wants to hear when I face my mother after my appointment: "You're crazy." What do you do?"The unkind journalist across from me at dinner last week also wondered if I got them because I wanted a fresh start."

I could laugh at it all because I know that bangs are not a sign of distress. (And maybe I'm a bit gullible where celebrity trends are concerned.There is no need to go deeper than that.