By Abbey Kelly
The sound of a soft piano instrumental version of Video Games by Lana Del Rey soothes the circle of students seated in a booked room in the Podium building. On a table in the centre of the room are some things that are typically at club meetings: chips, snacks, juice boxes and club stickers. But there are also some things that seem out of place: hand mirrors, combs and scissors.
Annie Damon, a second-year politics and governance student, welcomed the lost and confused last Thursday with the first meeting of Ryerson’s new “Cut Your Own Bangs” club. Damon created the club hoping to provide students who just can’t handle what’s happening right now with a healthy outlet for healing. The club’s slogan is “A change to your hair, a change to your world.”
Damon says she feels like she “lost all sense of [herself]” in her routine of school and work, which led her to her new look.
“I was holed up in my room for four days straight, living off protein bars and the water that leaks from the ceiling,” she says as she disinfects the hair tools. “I wanted control over my life again!”
Over 35 students attended the inaugural meeting.
“I’m feeling lost, you know?” Safi Utcht, a first-year photography student, says. At the meeting, she feels the weight of the craft scissors in her hand as she meets her own gaze in the mirror. “The physical world is all an illusion and subjective interpretation,” she says as she takes the first cut.
For a moment, all that can be heard in the Podium room are quiet sniffles and the snipping of hair as the music changes to a lo-fi/hip-hop radio—beats to relax to.
Suddenly, another student appeared in the doorway, hovering for a moment. Black mascara tracks ran down their face. “Give me the scissors!” they screamed.
Hera Scope, a fourth-year biology student, just got out of a five-year relationship. Their sobs echoed throughout the room.
Club members ran over, running with scissors in hand to their aid. Utcht tried to give Scope tissues, only for them to be slapped away.
“If he doesn’t like me now, just wait until he sees me with bangs!” Scope took a pair of scissors and ran to the nearest mirror. The rest of the club crowded around them as they hacked away at their hair. The crowd chanted, “Snip, snip, clip, clip, time for new shit!”
If you are looking for something to ease the stress life is throwing your way, be sure to check out the “Cut Your Own Bangs” club that meets every second Thursday in the Arts Lounge in POD 349.
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