What is a heartbreak, if it doesn’t change you (at least on the outside)?

I always had a theory about women and relationships: That there is a strong positive correlation between the length of a woman’s hair and the length of time for which the relationship is in existence.

For many years I prided myself on this piece of theorising, based on much observation and some experience. My rationale was that if you are in a relationship, and particularly in a place within it that you like, you don’t want to change a thing. And one of the most obvious personal and cosmetic changes you can make, is to your hairstyle.

Turns out though, that this theory, is actually just a corollary to a far more popular theory, which says that one of the first things that women do after a breakup is to get a haircut. Apparently Coco Chanel, the path breaking French fashion designer, famously said “A woman who cuts her hair is about to change her life”. The idea behind this is essentially the same as that behind my corollary. That when you break up, you really do want to change a part of you, and the easiest way to do that is to change how you look.

But apparently not everyone is content changing their hair.

A more recent related idea is the “revenge body” theory. It came to light around the time that the song ‘Kaala Chashma’ from the recently released Baar Baar Dekho first hit the screens. Writeups on the song talked about Katrina Kaif’s superbly toned abs in the song. That this came soon after her alleged breakup with Ranbir Kapoor (neither of the two has publically admitted to their having been together, but it was something of an open secret, apparently).   The goddess physique was somehow linked to the breakup, possibly because it is Kaif’s first movie post breakup (my surmise). It was quickly termed the “revenge body”.

This theory is an extension of the haircut theory. In essence, it means that not only is it important to dramatically shake off your past, either with a haircut or through the far tougher route of acquiring a well worked out body, you need to do it to show your former significant other what they are missing.

Quite frankly, this theory sounds like a bit of a stretch.

Also, it works on the assumption that all breakups are acrimonious or that somehow the man rejected the woman and now she is getting back. I don’t know if there are any details to the Ranbir-Katrina story I missed, which somehow fit into either of these two categories, but if it is a generalisation, clearly it shows some need for a more nuanced understanding of what drives relationships, and what ends them.

If the event that there is indeed a correlation between breakups and having a better physique, then there is another reasoning that exists as well. Working out is a way of either working through your pain or supressing it. Throwing yourself into an activity with tangible results is often a good way of forgetting about something that is causing you anguish, till overtime, the feeling of anguish dissolves. There are countless people who throw themselves into work when they go through troubled personal times. This is a version of the same phenomenon.

There is of course no way of knowing how far this theory works unless an empirical exercise is carried out, and I don’t know of any, but it is a good one nevertheless. Consider the alternative theory: You binge eat – especially desserts – when you are in sorrow. Now that’s a destructive idea – not only are you unhappy, gaining weight is definitely not the way to get sustainably happier. Rather the former, than the latter!