Fifteen years since the original series first aired, a reboot—The L Word: Generation Q—has descended from the heavens and dragged up from the bowels of Supercuts hell, Shane McCutcheon’s signature hairdo.
So much has changed since the women of the original L Word series walked slow motion into a police station to answer for Jenny Sheckter’s well-deserved death. Bette is running for mayor, Alice is platinum blonde, and then there’s Shane, played by Kate Moennig, who continues to “look very Shane today,” rocking that same early-2000’s haircut with the addition of a few more strands of fringe toward the front of her face. Anyone who says Shane can’t commit doesn’t realize she’s been committed to her hair since the day she swaggered into our lives.
When the ads for Generation Q appeared, I didn’t want to believe that Shane’s hairstyle had changed so little over more than a decade. To investigate the evolution of this beloved cheater’s hair choices, I went back and watched all six seasons of The L Word. According to the findings of my obsessive binge-watch, Shane’s hair has been the same with but one exception to the pattern.
Season 2 was the only one in which Shane strayed from her usual haircut and went for a style that was incredibly similar but shorter. Shane, who claimed in a later season that she had never been in love with someone else (#JusticeforCarmen), debuted the shorter look after a particularly messy relationship with Cherie Jaffe. After Season 2, though, Shane grew her hair back out and never changed it again. The only noticeable alteration since her pre-Generation Q days is the presence of styling products. Early-2000’s Shane was heavy into hair gel and styling waxes, allowing her hair to poke out in different directions like the snakes on the head of Medusa. This newer, more mature Shane seems to have discovered the benefits of conditioner and lower heat styling.
Her hair has so much life, now that she isn’t spending all her time fucking anyone that walks into her line of sight.