Eddy Chen
Eddy Chen
In the first episode of the final season of The Summer I Turned Pretty, Jeremiah Fisher tells his girlfriend (and, later, fiancée), Belly Conklin, “Hey, don’t ever cut your hair, okay?” As if that wasn’t enough of an impetus to chop off her locks, a broken engagement and a soul-searching trip to Paris certainly got Belly over the finish line. At the end of the penultimate episode, Belly hinted at her intentions when she walked into a Parisian salon. Now, as the show draws to a close, she is beginning a new chapter with her much shorter ’do. In the words of one very wise woman, “Claire, it’s French!”
“I was excited when I learned that Belly was getting a bob,” Lola Tung, who plays Belly, tells Vogue. “It’s nice to see her make that decision for herself, almost as a physical representation of the growth and change she’s experienced.” Jenny Han, the show’s executive producer and author of the novels that the series is based on, agrees. For Han, the haircut signals Belly stepping into herself.
“I think women often cut their hair after a breakup or when they want to let go of old baggage and signal to people that they’re ready for change,” Han says. “The idea is that if you look different, then you can feel different.”
Belly’s bob took some engineering in the hair and makeup trailer. While the team cut the front of Tung’s actual hair, the back is a U-line wig, with the actor’s signature long hair preserved underneath. Even though Tung was only getting her front pieces cut, Han admits, “I was super-nervous about it. Obviously, when you cut it, you are not going to know for sure how it’s going to look until you see it.” So she volunteered herself for a haircut, googling the best hairdressers in Paris to tackle the job. “I covertly went in and got my hair cut,” Han recalls. “I have very thick hair, so if [the hairstylist] can do my hair, then he can do her hair.” Half-joking, she adds, “I’m just on set, so who cares if my hair doesn’t look good.”
Belly’s bob joins the canon of transformative heroine haircuts: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sliding Doors, and—of course—Friends all spring to mind. “I think it’s really fitting and sort of lovely to see [Belly] in the tradition of all these other female main characters who chop their hair to feel different,” says Han. While Tung didn’t get the full chop, she does acknowledge what a significant change it is for Belly. “Hair can hold weight and memories and meaning, and I think this moment was the perfect time for her to cut hers,” she says. “Even earlier in the season, it is something that comes up with Jeremiah. He tells her to never cut her hair. I think her making this decision feels freeing, like a fresh start.”
Han acknowledges the dramatic irony of Belly’s metamorphosis arriving at a moment that The Summer I Turned Pretty fans have been waiting for: a reunion between Belly and her first love, Conrad Fisher. “Her making the decision to cut her hair is coming at a moment when an old love from her past is returning,” says Han. “It feels very poetic to me that she’s looking to something new and wanting something new for the summer, and something old is coming back her way.”
This article was originally published on Vogue.com.
