But a famous woman’s hair, like most things about famous women, always becomes everyone’s business anyway, so Twitter predictably went into meltdown mode yesterday when Beyoncé showed up at a Paris station wearing super-short, pinup-girl bangs. You can call it Bangpocalypse or search for outraged Twitter mentions of “Beyoncé bangs”; there’s even a backlash to the backlash at this point.
Setting aside the fact that the bangs are most likely a wig, and that Beyoncé has donned dozens of different hairstyles in her videos alone . . . why wouldn’t we want one of our most beautiful, effortlessly glamorous women to take this kind of risk? The magic of famous, beautiful people is that they can wear anything—velour pink tracksuits or dumpy white T-shirts or matching outfits with the rest of her girl group—and make it work. Famous women get to test out fashion months before the rest of us, and inspire us to follow their lead; when you see something in a magazine and say, “I wish I could pull that off,” Beyoncé can pull that off. She’s out there taking the risk for you, and probably without even having to actually cut her bangs.
Like Sarah Paulson at the Emmys, Beyoncé is taking the kind of risk few people seem to be willing to go near anymore, risking the wrath of the Fashion Police or the Twitter armies to just do something that doesn’t feel exhausted. Because she’s Beyoncé, the uproar was swift and stupidly intense. But because she’s Beyoncé, you’ll probably be seeing girls in Bushwick with their bangs cut short six months from now. Don’t forget that Paris train station where it all began.
