Relationships: The Tale of a Hairdo
by Julia Sneden
The other day at the doctor’s office, I noticed that his nurse, Karen, had a new, really short hairdo. When I commented on it (because it did look very unusual for her), she rolled her eyes, and groaned “Right. Short.”
“Blame my hairdresser,” she said. “She’s someone who loves to talk about herself and her problems. She and her husband have been in the process of separating or of reconciling, alternately and non-stop, for years. The worse her life gets, the shorter she cuts my hair. When I had an appointment the other day, I learned that she was having husband trouble yet again, and wanted to tell me all about it. She just grew angrier and angrier as she spoke, snip-snip-snip, and by the time she was through with her sorry tale, I was nearly bald.
“The visit before that one, she and her husband had recently made up. Beyond offering that information, she just gave a dreamy smile and said not another word. She quietly shaped my hair with a light hand, and I was in and out in less than ten minutes. My hair looked great.
“I’ve been going to her for a long time, and she’s a great hair person, but by now I should have known enough to walk out as soon as she said: ‘Well, the rat is gone again.’ She carried on for about 30 minutes, and my hair just kept getting shorter and shorter. That was two weeks ago, and I still don’t recognize myself in the mirror.”
It’s a funny little story, but it triggered something that got me to thinking about the effect that a hairdo can have on one’s equilibrium. Anyone who has ever suffered a disastrous haircut can relate to Karen’s story.
There’s no question that hair occupies an absurdly powerful position in relation to a woman’s self-esteem. Why else have so many of us fallen in with the kill-the-gray, color-in-a-bottle industry?
Our skin may crinkle and sag; the roses in our cheeks may fade; our eyesight may mandate bifocals; our undergarments may sequé from lacy, sexy stuff to sturdy cotton-cum-underwire; our fingernails may ridge-up or turn brittle; our feet may grow calluses or odd bumps: but somehow we can live with those changes, and maybe even take them with a sense of humor.
But when hair begins to thin, and patches of pink scalp show through; when curly hair becomes limp or limp hair develops odd cowlicks where none ever existed; when hair absolutely refuses to be controlled by gel or spray or hot curler or back-brushing, a woman finds herself bang up against that universal truth: Hair matters.
I recall the blue hair of my high school history teacher, back in the pre-Clairol days when, if they were over 60, ladies who regularly put bluing into their loads of white laundry always saved a few drops for their post-shampoo rinse. My teacher obviously had a rather heavy hand in the matter, as her hair often verged on a blue that was closer to lavender.
Painting: Sif, of the golden hair, from mythology by John Charles Dollman, 1909
Pages: 1 · 2
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