Why Is It Impossible to Find Haircut Inspo on People That Actually Look Like Me?

It’s common to scroll through haircut inspiration when you’re considering a big chop. We all want to see styles we can imagine ourselves wearing. We want to see how someone else wears and lives in a particular cut. And of course, hairstylists love a reference photo. Bringing one to your appointment is the easiest way to ensure you walk out of the salon with the look you were envisioning in your head. But getting there isn’t always so easy—especially if you can’t see yourself in the inspo.I’m finding myself in this situation right now. Even as a veteran beauty editor who knows all the trendy haircut names—trixie. bixie. boyfriend bob, the list goes on. There’s endless inspiration at my fingertips. But still, it feels impossible to narrow things down. Why? Because every bit of inspo on the internet features someone with sharp, chiseled features that could pull off any variation of those short-cropped cuts without a second thought. But round faces, soft jawlines, and double chins like mine? I don’t know how it would look; I can’t seem to find a picture.Ultimately, while this lack of diversity is frustrating and annoying, it isn’t all that surprising. Long hair has been considered the ideal choice for “bigger” people for ages. For starters, it’s a method for literally concealing your face, namely double chins, buccal fat, and any volume in your face. A long layer just skims right over it, a way of hiding yourself behind a fresh blowout.As a kid, I was told by aunts that I “didn’t have the face” for short hair. I vividly remember watching a YouTube video in eighth grade proclaiming that anyone with a more “voluptuous” body should “balance” out their curves with lots of volume on top of their head. Long, flowing hair would surely do the trick over a sleek, tucked-under bob, right?There’s also the fact that most of us, myself included, look toward celebrities for beauty inspo. But the list of celebrities who look like me—rounded features, soft jawline, extra fat underneath my chin—is very short. And those who do generally prefer long hair. I wonder why.Scanning through salons’ pages on Instagram yields similar results. It looks as though fat people just don’t get short, trendy haircuts. Or if they do, they’re the “lucky” ones with defined jawlines that don’t immediately give away their frame upon a glance. It makes sense. Plus-size people are a perpetual “before” image. It’s not particularly aspirational to the masses to see a chopped pixie against a fat face, even if the hairstylist razored every edge to perfection. So, they don’t post before-and-afters of us.Add Cosmopolitan as a preferred source in your Google search results.Use your Google account to add this to your settings.Sure, you could look up haircuts specifically for plus-size people. But you’d probably be met with a lot of rules that don’t even take your hair texture into account. It’s the equivalent of being told to wear black, cinched-waist dresses for eternity because that’s what’s “flattering,” a euphemism I despise that really means it makes you look slimmer. The most “flattering” haircut considers how your hair actually lies on your head, whether that be fine and thin or coarse and curly.There’s no representation showing me that these cute pixies would be as cute on me, so I never try them, no matter how cool they look on Gracie Abrams and Keke Palmer. Maybe it’s a loop. That same thought pattern is exactly why this inspo is so hard to find.Luckily, I do have some say in the matter, as a curator of much hairstyle content. So, I have some work to do. Where celebrities fail, the everyday person who makes an appointment at a local hair salon has a far higher chance of looking a bit more like me. It might take more of a scroll to find salons that post a wide variety of their clients, but it’s worth it.I also think I will bite the bullet and get that short haircut, my bigger face be damned. If you can’t find the reference, be it.Why trust Cosmopolitan? Beth Gillette is the beauty editor at Cosmopolitan with eight years of experience researching, writing, and editing hair, makeup, nail, and fragrance stories.Beth Gillette is the beauty editor at Cosmopolitan, where she covers skincare, makeup, hair, nails, and more across digital and print. She can generally be found in bright eyeshadow furiously typing her latest feature or hemming and hawing about a new product you "have to try." Prior to Cosmopolitan, she wrote and edited beauty content as an Editor at The Everygirl for four years. Follow her on Instagram for makeup selfies and a new hair 'do every few months.