Hair Today - December 2009

I am letting my hair grow. At least for today.

I’ve been through this before, but I usually get over it quickly and head to the salon before it even approaches my shoulders. After all, what woman doesn’t obsess about her hair? Is it too long, too short, too gray, too blonde? Should I get it highlighted/dyed/bleached/permed/streamin’/flaxen/waxin’?

I like my hair short in the summer. “Give me the convertible cut,” I tell my hairdresser (I just can’t call him a stylist, because that would sound as if I have style). He knows that means cut it short enough so that when the top is down on my convertible it will simply blow back in place (the hair, not the top on the convertible). However, we are no longer in convertible weather, so, with my top firmly closed, I may be able to grow my hair out for a while.

Usually when I decide to let it grow it is because on that very day I think my hair looks good. It is not unusual for me to make an appointment to get it cut immediately thereafter, having awakened the next day with hair that has grown Rapunzel-like overnight and suddenly is over the top.

We all know our own hair better than anyone else – which is not to say we don’t need hair advice. I’ve been known to ask others about my need for a haircut and whether it looks better shorter or longer (which, granted, for me is a very small range). Once I got a very short haircut that I thought looked completely different. I asked my BFF about how she liked it and she replied, “Your hair always looks the same to me.” I decided to take that as a compliment.

There are days (in an office environment where the same people see you every day, everything is under scrutiny) when people have come up to me and said, “Your hair looks so good today,” and I have argued with them. Generally the day that compliment was bestowed was a day I thought it looked terrible. I mean, you know when your hair looks good, and no one can tell you otherwise when you are sure it doesn’t. “Oh, thanks,” I’d say, “but I need a haircut badly and this is not a good hair day for me.” Unless it was the actual day I was getting my hair cut. For some unknown reason, you always have good hair on the day it gets cut. And then it takes, by my count, about 10 days before it looks good again. I always try to get my hair cut 10 days before any big event, assuming, of course, that these events don’t happen weekly, in which case I’d have a shaved head.

My hair is a bone of contention in the pool. At home, I wear a baseball cap to keep my face out of the sun and my hair dry (clearly, I don’t believe swimming pools are actually for swimming). But at aqua aerobics, I just try to avoid getting my hair wet. To quote John Travolta’s Tony Manero in “Saturday Night Fever” after his father smacks him upside the head: “My hair! Watch the hair. I spend a lot of time on my hair.” Alright, I don’t spend as much time as Tony Manero spends on his hair, but still, I don’t want to have to go through all the required steps after I emerge from the pool – washing, gelling or moussing, drying, spraying, etc. There is one man who swims laps while we do our aerobics, and he is the splashiest swimmer you can imagine. I try to stay on the other side of the pool, but sometimes I get caught in his wake. Come on, man, I’m not here to get wet, I think. This is an issue when we play aqua volleyball, since I refuse to dive (or is it submerge myself?) after a ball (this is not the Olympics, believe me). I am usually the only one who finishes playing and doesn’t need to dry her hair. If I let my hair grow, this will be even more of a problem, since some of the exercises require us to keep own shoulders (and presumably our shoulder-length hair) in the water. I might have to resort to wearing the bathing cap fellow AA (aqua aerobics) friend Angela (shout out) so graciously provided. Suffice to say they just don’t make them like that anymore, except for this flowered masterpiece.

It is almost impossible to communicate appropriately with one’s hairdresser. His interpretation of “short” or “long” never quite matches up with yours. I’ve gone to the salon with pictures of hairdos I like in my hand. Yet I seem to exit with the same haircut every time. I don’t dare use someone else in that salon because that is just not proper hair protocol. Once my guy was away and I really needed a haircut, so I went to the person who blow dries my hair (this is a two-person job, you see) for a haircut. She did a great job, but it is her boss who always cuts me, and I didn’t want to undercut him, so to speak. (Oh, Jerry Seinfeld, I totally got that episode when you had the other barber come to your house. You just can’t cheat on your own guy in the same shop.) Yet I am already worried what I will do when this guy retires, since neither of us is getting any younger and I have gone to him for at least 15 years.

But I don’t have to worry about that now, because I have decided to let my hair grow and won’t need a haircut for some time. Or at least for today.