Beyoncé opened up about her ‘rebellious’ decision to cut her hair into a pixie hairstyle over a decade ago. In an interview for Essence’s March and April Beauty Issue, the 42-year-old singer said she decided to chop off her hair during ‘a very big emotional transformation’ in her life.
At the time, the 32-time Grammy winner — who rocked icy blonde waves at the premiere of Tyler Perry’s Mea Culpa on Friday — said she was ‘just wanted it off’, because she wanted her physical appearance to reflect the ‘metamorphosis’ she was going through inside.
Back then in 2013, there were rumors circulating about her husband Jay-Z being unfaithful and three years later she dropped her album Lemonade, which hinted at his infidelity. He later confirmed that he cheated and hinted at the fact that they narrowly avoided divorce in a conversation with The New York Times Style Magazine.
During her interview, Beyoncé gave a thoughtful answer to a question about her short hair era and whether or not it represented a ‘life change’. ‘It did. That’s right,’ she said. ‘I love how we associate a certain hairstyle with moments in our lives, like that short-hair moment.’ She recalled that particular day and said she did not have a certain hairstyle in mind but just wanted to ‘liberate’ herself by cutting off her hair.
‘I remember the day I decided to just cut all my hair off,’ she said. ‘I didn’t have a particular style in mind.’ She then confirmed that she was going through a significant time in her life. ‘It wasn’t an aesthetic choice, but it was a very big emotional transformation and metamorphosis that I was going through,’ she said.
‘So much of my identity as a performer has been connected to flowing hair,’ she explained. ‘Cutting my hair off was me rebelling against being this woman that society thinks I’m supposed to be.’ The 16 Carriages hitmaker said she had just welcomed her daughter Blue Ivy, now 12, and wanted to free herself from expectations put upon her about what kind of mother she should be.
‘I was a new mother, and something about the liberation of becoming a mother made me want to just shed all of that,’ she said. ‘It was a physical representation of me shedding the expectations put upon me. I just wanted it off.’
She recalled grabbing the shears herself and cutting her long hair herself, which she said was ‘very intentional’, to the surprise of her hairstylist and friend Neal Farinah.