Hair

Ok, here’s the thing. I’m vain about my hair. Which wouldn’t seem obvious really because I only get my hair cut about two or three times a year. It not like I look in the mirror constantly. It’s just that I like to know that my haircut is OK, then I don’t think about it. I don’t check it, I just leave it be. That’s why when I find a hairdresser I trust, I stick with them.

I’ve always been this way. As a very young girl, I remember taking over my ponytail duties because my mum just didn’t quite get it right. As an eight year old, I curled my long straight hair for a special event and my aunt was surprised that I felt the need to do it. When I was ten, my mum took me to her avant-garde hairdresser who gave me a cool asymmetrical style which I grew to hate as soon as the girls at school said it looked like a mistake.

In my early teens, I had a perm and was so distraught at the frizzy result that I ran shrieking down the hallway at home. When washing it several times didn’t dull the unwanted curls, I had it cut as short as I could. In my late teens, I shunned haircuts, growing my hair as long as I could, dyeing it a glossy black and adding coloured streaks to the front, just to be different, like everyone else.

By the time I was at uni, I was sick of my hair vanity and one late night at a friend’s house, with great drama, I chopped my long ponytail clean off at the hair band. The result was a surprisingly slick concave bob. After this I cut my own hair for a while. You can get away with it at art school. Then came dreadlocks, then the dreadlocks were cut off into a pixie cut, then years of various short hair styles, long again then short again…

Phew, it feels good to admit my hair vanity. And I know there are more important things in life to worry about. I don’t know how everyone else feels, but I suspect that we all have our funny little ways with our hair. Whether our hair is long, short, spiky, smooth, coloured, natural, curly, frizzy or shaved, I guess it’s all about having hair that makes us feel like us.