On Saturday, April 7, Keene State College students, friends, family and community members will get the chance to donate their hair to Pantene Beautiful Lengths, an organization that makes wigs to give to cancer patients.
Photo contributed by Josh JOHNSTON
Junior Maria Aiello is running the Beautiful Lengths event this year, which will take place during KSC’s Relay For Life. Aiello said students can either choose to pledge to donate their hair online or they can show up on the day of the event and donate. The donation must be a minimum of eight inches, but Aiello said participants are welcome to donate as much as they want.
Aiello said the group donating will meet up beforehand, and then go into the gym and have their hair cut off by a family member or friend in front of the people who are at Relay For Life.
Aiello said her first year of college, the participants would go to SuperCuts in Keene and have it cut there, but she wanted the event to be bigger.
“It wasn’t really a big event on campus and we wanted to bring it back on campus so a bunch of people could see it and it would be more of a celebration of having hair cut off and donating it,” she said.
Aiello also said after participants get their hair cut by their friend or family member, they will have it styled by a SuperCuts stylist. Already about 15 people who have pledged to donate. The Beautiful Lengths group started promoting the event earlier this year than last year to give people more time to grow out their hair.
Anyone who donated on or before March 23 will receive a t-shirt, said Aiello, who also said this year, there is, once again, a sorority challenge.
“The sorority challenge tries to get a lot of sorority girls to donate their hair, and whichever sorority has the most members donate receives a prize basket,” Aiello said.
Aiello said she chose to join Beautiful Lengths because they don’t charge cancer patients for the wigs while some other places do. Aiello said the event is important to her, and she has donated her hair multiple times in the past.
“The purpose for me would be just to donate and help somebody in need in a really unique way that is free to you and is something that is so personal that it is a cool touch to know that your hair, which is something that you grow on your own, is going to someone in need. It might be a confidence booster for them. It will go towards making them live a happier life,” Aiello said.
Aiello said she joined Beautiful Lengths her first year and wanted to become more involved with it so took a more leadership role during her sophomore year and this year.
Colby Dudal can be contacted at cdudal@kscequinox.com
