Hair are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos and transmit them directly into the brain. This is the reason bald-headed men are uptight.” I am writing this at the hairdressers and thinking about these words of Danny’s in the cult film Withnail & I. Also, weirdly, Kabbalah, which teaches hair is recognised for its spiritual power.
Hair, hair, hair. I don’t normally pay a lot of attention to my hair. It’s just been here. Long and kind of kept under a certain amount of discipline with unguents and blowdrying, but not really notable other than that. Yet hair has been ruling my life lately. Firstly I had my hair cut off short in lots of layers – not exactly my choice, but one doesn’t like to quibble with the enfant terrible of the hair world, the legend Paul Huege de Serville, who is a bona fide artiste. He decided to free me from the tyranny of blowdrying and ghds and let my naturally curly hair run freeee, freeee as the wind blows, free as the grass grows.
“Your hair has been blown out,” he said, shaking his head like a mechanic who tells you your transmission is stuffed. I didn’t mind. They give you wine at hair salons now. By the end you don’t really care if you have a mohawk.
When he’d finished my hair, it looked cool. Then I had a team of five stylists working on ‘defining the curl’ before I had my picture taken by a star photographer. I was part of the Servilles salon’s My Hair My Style campaign which featured real women like me. I looked a bit like a haggard Olivia-Newton John from Grease after she’s had a couple of kids and a bitter divorce. After that it was left to me to try to emulate this coiffure at home. Help!
You’d think curly hair would be less trouble than straightened hair – you just leave it to curl, right? Well, no, it is a bit like that bogus ‘natural’ makeup which takes hours to apply. Curly hair needs to be taught to curl in the right way. My own attempt left me looking like a cross between orphan Annie and Janet Frame. Love Janet and all, but not sure I was ready for a tribute ‘fro.
There was also the matter of the length.
I felt terrifyingly exposed. Long hair gives you something to hide behind. People inevitably see your hair before they see you. Before my new look, I hadn’t been to the hairdresser for two years so I could look like a hippy. Now I feared short hair made me look like one of those posh suburban wash’n’wear matron types who is never out of their Lululemons. (Don’t you have any real clothes?)
Most importantly, it did not satisfy my one and only style edict: “Would Stevie wear this?” Stevie Nicks didn’t do short. Or Lululemon.
Without long hair I didn’t really feel like I was ME. I don’t know who I am at the best of times, but at least whatever random style inspiration I was going for, I could toss my hair around. I returned to the salon for emergency help. The lovely stylist at Servilles, who was rocking an Egyptian vibe, said, in a kind voice, “Well, we can’t stick your hair back on.” Fine for you, Cleopatra. But turns out there was another answer. (God, I can’t believe I have written a page about my hair! But really, hair is important.)
So here I am, writing this on my laptop while another stylist from Servilles installs my new hair extensions. I know! I didn’t think I was the kind of person who would have hair extensions: they seem too vain and contrived and too Lindsay Lohan-esque for a 47-year-old single mother. The addition of purloined silky blond tresses seems somehow a betrayal of the sisterhood; could I possibly read Joan Didion and also have hair extensions? Would I be forced to get fake tits and wear hot pants too?
It was even worse when my stylist told me the lengths she was attaching were real hair!
I thought they were fake – they were so shiny they reminded me of a treasured Barbie doll who had a ponytail which extended and retracted. But my stylist had her own narrative which was far more romantic. “Remember how in Little Women Jo grew her hair and then cut it off and sold it? Think of it like that.” That helped. Sort of. And once the extensions were put on – they are braided in, just like cornrows, which seemed kind of organic – I felt so… swishy! It was wonderful.
I had hair again, and even longer than before. This is the secret transformative power of hair. Forget any other image type thing you do to express your inner essence – makeup, clothes, jewellery, tattoos, piercings: hair is the single most defining aspect which expresses the way you see yourself. (In my case I think I must see myself as a rather louche, slightly sluttyish old trout.)
So much of our identity comes from our hair. It is our ‘frame’ – sorry Janet – and how we wear it sends potent signals and symbolism about our construct of self. The danger was, with short hair, I may even start acting like a, God forbid, housewife. Without long hair I did not feel feminine. It is not just length, but the colour. In certain parts of Auckland you could throw an iPhone 6 across any bar and guarantee you will hit a blonde. Not only that, but as some women get older, they inevitably get blonder and blonder. (And wear more and more gold jewellery, depending on how often they see their husbands).
A friend of mine who is a brunette walked into an inner-city hair salon and the hairdresser blurted out in shock, “You’re not blonde!”. Having hair that’s not ‘done’ is also a subversive gesture of rebellion and liberation. Even more radical are women like comedian Jaquie Brown and journalist Suzanne McFadden, who choose to boldly go grey. They make me want to let go of my hangups about long hair and embrace my ‘fro. But I’m just not ready to let go of my hair. I love my hair extensions too much. Swish, swish, swish. If Kabbalah is right, I’ve got my mojo back.
And so sorry sisterhood, I have decided that’s empowering.
Words by: Deborah Hill Cone
