How Much Horsepower Is in a Ponytail?
I’ve had long hair for a while now… almost seven years.
Shoulder-length, reliably so. Long enough to tie back. Long enough to be identified by.
Long enough that people who haven’t seen me in a while will pause and say, “Yeah, I recognized you immediately—long hair.”
At a certain point, hair stops being hair and becomes a handle.
Not like that, you dirty bird, I mean like a call-sign.
And to be clear, I love my hair. It’s not a burden. It’s not even much maintenance. It behaves itself. Very little knotting or tangling. It’s been good to me. I don’t resent the rituals around it. If anything, I appreciate them. There’s something grounding about it.
But lately I’ve been wondering if I’m really loyal to it — or just hiding behind it.
There’s a subtle difference between something you choose and something that has quietly chosen you.
For a long time, “long hair guy” felt like a useful shorthand. It made me legible at a glance. It felt expressive without requiring explanation. It painted me as a non-threat.
Long hair carries a lot of cultural shorthand—creative, gentle, nonconforming, unhurried. Sometimes that’s accurate. Sometimes it’s just convenient.
But convenience can harden into expectation.
Hair colors perception. I can’t quantify it, but I feel it in rooms. In first impressions that seem to land before I open my mouth. Long hair can read as ease, rebellion, softness—or as evasiveness, immaturity, or drift, depending on who’s doing the reading. None of those are entirely wrong, though none of them are completely true, either.
Hair, I’ve learned, makes an excellent shield.
I know this because I’ve used it before. I rode out most of the 2010s tucked behind a tidy emo swoop, peering out from beneath a curtain of hair. That haircut was not accidental. It softened edges. It blurred contours. If you couldn’t fully see me, maybe you couldn’t quite pin me down either.
Which brings me to Samson. The story feels cartoonish until you sit with it. Strength stored in keratin sounds ridiculous at first, but emotionally it actually tracks. Hair stands in for something unbroken, unpruned, feral. A continuity of self. A refusal to be trimmed back. When Delilah cuts Samson’s hair, it isn’t just a haircut—it’s an interruption. A vulnerability superimposed.
Cutting it now can feel like choosing that interruption.
Naturally, I start running the calculations. How much horsepower do you lose per inch? Is it linear, or logarithmic? Is the effect immediate, or will my vitality taper off over time, as conformity slowly strengthens its stranglehold? These are questions science has cowardly avoided.
But there’s another variable in play now: time.
I’m increasingly aware of the marching boots of baldness. No air raid sirens, or flashing lights yet… My hair is still thick and healthy. But I hear the sound of distant footsteps, the rattling of sabers, and the thump-thump-thumping of war drums. Baldness coming to lay siege…
Which introduces a different philosophy: use it while you’ve got it.
There’s a strong argument to be made for keeping it long as long as it’s available. Long hair while it’s thick reads as intention. Long hair when it’s thinning reads as denial. Those are two very different statements, and I’d like to exit the stage before the costume starts to look confused.
But then, there’s a certain dignity in choosing the cut before the cut chooses you.
But then, the counterargument is tempting too: that cutting it now is premature. That if baldness is coming eventually, why rush to rehearse it? Why not live fully inside the phase you’re in, rather than preemptively anticipating the next one? plus long-hair-me feels like me! that’s the me that graduated college, that has traveled the world, that got married… short hair me feels like baby finn. a person I left behind a long time ago…
I keep circling the same question: am I keeping the hair because it still feels like part of my identity, or because I’m afraid of what comes after?
If I cut it, I doubt my power will disappear entirely. Maybe it just redistributes. Fewer horses under the hood, perhaps — but better mileage. Less drag.
And if I keep it? Maybe that’s fine too. There’s something honorable about letting a thing run its natural course.
And if I cut it? Hair grows back… until it doesn’t…
p.s. buy some prints