It's Time To Pony Up: APW & National Donate Your Hair Day

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Whenever Meg and I talk about our partnership with Pantene Beautiful Lengths and the incredible community response to it (because we do talk about you at cocktail parties), we keep saying the same thing: It’s such a big ask. Most online partnerships that require reader participation are relatively simple. Share this. Retweet that. Enter a contest. The idea is that you just can’t ask the internet for more than that. But no. Back in June, we asked you to donate your hair. More specifically, to cut off eight inches of hair so that women who have lost their hair to cancer can get free wigs and regain a sense of normalcy in an otherwise shitty situation.

And you delivered.

You delivered better than we ever could have asked, and that was before the official event even took place. So today we want to give some love back to the people who have already donated their hair, rally the rest of you for National Donate Your Hair Day on Saturday, and let you know about some exciting things we’re participating in to help mark the occasion.

National Donate Your Hair Day: The Details

First up, National Donate Your Hair Day is this Saturday, September 7th! I know a lot of you have already pledged to donate your hair, but if you’re new here, these are the requirements (for a complete guide on how to donate, scroll to the bottom for a handy infographic. If you click on it, you can get the full size image):

Ponytail must be a minimum of 8 inches to donate
No dyes, bleaches, or chemicals (henna is fine, though)
No more than 5% gray

It’s Party Time! (Enter to Win)

And because the Pantene Beautiful Lengths team has fallen head over heels in love with the APW community, they want to give back and invite one reader from the Tri-State area to join them for the official National Donate Your Hair Day event in New York. The event will take place this Saturday, September 7th at the Mark Garrison Salon in Manhattan and the reader will receive a free haircut by a celebrity stylist as part of their donation (in addition to makeup touch ups from the CoverGirl makeup team and the opportunity to hang out with the other Beautiful Lengths VIPs at the party). Pantene Beautiful Lengths will even let you bring a friend or partner for support. Just leave a comment at the end of this post saying, “I’m ponying up!” and we’ll choose one of you at random by the end of the day today. The actual time of the appointment will be confirmed once a winner is chosen. Eligibility rules still apply (as in, you have to be able to donate your hair to enter) and access is non-transferable. View full terms and conditions here.

The Vine-umentary

Now for the really fun part. (I know, I know. Like it could get any cooler.) As part of National Donate Your Hair Day, Pantene is putting together a video documentary featuring past and present Beautiful Lengths donors as well as Vines of this year’s donors “Ponying Up” and donating their hair, and they’ve asked APW to be a part of it. To participate, all you have to do is take a video of your “Pony Up” moment and upload the video to Twitter and Vine tagging @Pantene and @PracticalWed, using the hashtag #BeautifulLengths. To celebrate the incredible commitment you’ve all made to this cause this year, we’ll be collecting all the Vines you send in and sharing them with the rest of the community. I predict it will be amazing and make me cry. (P.S. Since so many of you have asked, if you are ineligible to donate, but still want to show your support for the campaign, you can do so by pledging to donate next year or by Tweeting or Facebooking your support for the program. Mention @Pantene and @PracticalWed using the hashtag #BeautifulLengths.)

Hot & Short

And finally, what you’ve all been waiting for. Proof that APW readers are, hands down, the coolest people on the internet, and that y’all are super hot with short hair.

When we first starting putting together this post, a mixture of pride, gratitude, and disbelief overcame me. This project started out as a quiet conversation at Meg’s dining room table. It was a dream that had lived inside of me for almost six years, one of those dreams that you’re afraid to say out loud because you don’t think it can exist as anything other than a dream. And with every photo that we’ve received, every ponytail that’s been Tweeted at us, that dream has become a reality, and one that’s exceeded my wildest expectations. When we introduced this partnership, we called it “Solidarity, Wigs, and Pantene Beautiful Lengths.” I thought what that meant was that we would show solidarity for the women who need wigs. It turns out, it was also solidarity for each other.

So let’s do this thing, guys. National Donate Your Hair Day is this Saturday. Let’s make it count. Full details on how to donate your hair are below. I, for one, can’t wait for the videos to start rolling in. I’ve already got my box of Kleenex ready to go.