BLOG 34: Hear,Hair...Over Here!

Hear Hair ...Over Here!

“Hair brings one's self-image into focus; it is vanity's proving ground. Hair is terribly personal, a tangle of mysterious prejudices.” ~Shana Alexander, Iconic Journalist, first woman staff writer and columnist for Life magazine

I have just returned from the Spanish mainland. Barcelona to be precise. The place is inhabited by some of the world’s most attractive and stylish people who carry themselves with poise and élan. Fashion is an integral part of the culture. Consequently, several leading fashion designers have set up their base in this Mediterranean country – and along with them peluquería (hair salons) representing all the big names… many of which started in Spain as to the Spanish woman, hair is their richest ornament. After all this is the country that gave the world the chignon… the Spanish woman knows a thing or too about how to get her hair to work for her.

Believe it or not I have friends who find visiting a peluquería a much better option than having a regular salon at home because there is a great choice of high quality salons and the prices are often more competitive than those in Britain. A great many peluquería possess the artistic flair and good training background that you would expect of any top class hairdresser anywhere in the world… and the Spanish woman would not be seen without her crowning glory looking perfect. As you walk down the boulevards you will see glossy tresses, updo’s, layers and highlights bouncing away like some Pantene commercial gone crazy. I suppose to my friends who wish to keep their hair lovely, a regular flight to Spain is worth it.

I have not been blessed with anything on my head that should merit such concern.

When I was little, my Mother (a fashionistas who has beautiful hair) covered her disappointment with having a pretty but primarily bald child by attaching ribbons and bows to any clump of hair that appeared on my pate. I look back on my childhood photos and find images of myself in the most glorious outfits (every little gal should have a mother like mine….Every ensemble well constructed plus “The shoes must match the bag”!)…. But I look upon my head and find a display reminiscent of a collection of shish kebabs!

I am pleased to say that towards the latter end of my primary school career, I sprouted enough hair to maintain some of the shorter styles of the day. However the die was cast… I was not ever to relax into a happy relationship with my tendrils. My hair was coarse in texture and dry… and also a rather disturbing shade of rust. It spent a lot of time in pony and pig tails… and finally by mid adolescence I was regularly dying it black. With the new (less disturbing) colour, my hair (when pulled back) seemed less of a problem – however it was never a joy so I projected my self-image through clothes. By the end of puberty however a miracle took place… my wiry hair stopped fighting me at every turn and gave way to long curls with a suggestion of the pre-Raphaelite. You would think this would have made both me and my mother happy… but the fashion for structured cuts was in so off it all came!

This set the precedent for many years… my hair being chopped, cut or coloured to suit whatever clothes were my style of the day. It was long, it was short, it was blonde, it was blue, it was asymmetric, it was straight…. Then finally after three decades of war… my hair and I called a truce. We agreed on black, long, and curly and we almost lived happily ever after.

Okay, there was the odd moment where a 2 tone dip dye (remember that fashion!) seemed like a good idea, then there were the Victoria Beckham-esque hair extensions, then when I became a parent I thought shorter hair would give me gravitas… but over all my hair and I settled at black, long, curly and that became the image I expected to see in the mirror.

Hair means strange things to society. As longer hair signals conventionality, I could afford to be much more rebellious with my clothing than I could with short hair as it softened the statements my clothing made. Equally, having such a dark hair colour signalled intelligence that a fairer shade would not, so I could afford to be more overtly sexual with my clothing without negative consequence. Also, dying my hair to an extreme colour like black meant I could wear dramatic make up and large accessories. My cosmetic box filled with shades of red lippy and gold brow highlighter and liquid eyeliner. My accessory drawer filled with funky costume jewellery. My personal style, that I assumed would see me out became formed and set.

Who knew that a part of my anatomy (for which I had historically held little regard) would play such a part in forming the image of what I projected to the world.

And then one day…. It was gone.

All of it.

I used the same old black dye I’d been using since a teenager… and the unthinkable happened. An allergic reaction of an epic scale that resulted in a week in hospital… and a totally bald head. The long term prognosis was that I could never use permanent hair colour again and that hair would grow back eventually but not around the hairline – making the use of extensions not a viable option. Scarves would suffocate new growth and with no hairline a wig would be hard to secure to the head. It would be better all round to face up to the fact that bald was probably the way forward for me.

After all… it’s just hair… it’s not like you lost a limb...is it? Well meaning friend after friend (all with glorious tresses of their own) kept telling me this.

Oh really?

A bald head has always been heavy with meaning. With women bald heads have been associated with trauma, brutality and the loss of individuality or strength. In the Second World War, the heads of French collaborators were shaved as part of their public humiliation. Among skinheads, a shorn head was a symbol of aggression. Among lesbians, a shaved head, or short hair at least, came to be a symbol of their abandoning of traditional man-pleasing femininity. In children shorn hair is inflicted upon those who have caught infectious head lice. Women who have survived cancer will tell you that one of the most traumatic things on the road to remission was the loss of their hair.

It is NOT just hair.

The image of a woman with no hair packs a visceral punch. There are lots of positive connotations in men’s hair loss to do with strength and masculinity, maturity and sexuality. But in women it's seen as being out of control because it's outside the normal distribution of hair behaviour. In other words, baldness is still relatively rare in women, and is generally treated as a sign of crisis or stress - or if it is known to be self-inflicted, a sign of madness.

Think about it….. What image to you says most strongly that Britney Spears had a breakdown in 2007? The fact that she spent most of the year drinking Starbucks whilst wearing a hoodie…. Or was it that she was driving with her kiddies on her lap with no restraints.………. Or was it that one Friday night she shaved her own head at Esther's Haircutting Studio?

Flowing hair is so tied up in notions of female beauty and a visible symbol of femininity/reproductive power… that for any woman to remove this symbol MUST be a sign that she has clearly lost her mind.

And so against this backdrop… I lost all of my hair.

Which meant that every day was an assault course of other people’s opinions. I have some comfort I suppose in that actresses who had to shave their heads for roles experienced much the same…

In 2005, Natalie Portman had shaved head for the film V for Vendetta. "Some people will think I'm a neo-Nazi or that I have cancer or I'm a lesbian," she said. Emma Thompson had to do so for the TV film, Wit. "I'll be bald for months," she said. "I'll be sleeping in pyjamas and a hat - no chance of any sex." Even the epic image of Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in Alien 3 did not pass without comment – such was the stress inflicted on the actress during the time she had to remain bald that she told the directors that if there is an Alien 4 she would do it again ONLY for a large bonus.

These are all women who were paid millions of pounds for their roles and for the inconvenience of a bald head for a few months…. And yet they still found the experience unpleasant… traumatic even.

Women are under constant societal pressure to look a certain way, act a certain way, and as a result, their hair is inextricably bound up with their femininity, sexuality and self-image. People expect women to have hair. If they don’t it is only acceptable to believe that they are victims of a disease so you can drown them in your pity. If the hair loss is for any other reason … well they did it to themselves so they are freaks. And someone like me who lost their hair due to a faulty beauty product is just a rightful example of the price women will pay for vanity. It is seen that what happened to me is entirely my own fault (damn the fact that 98% o women in this country use hair colorants).

I didn’t realise, until it happened, how much my idea of myself was all wrapped up in my image I now look at myself in the mirror, and I am repulsed. So total is the conditioning that a woman must have hair… I am nowhere ready (some 2 years later) to trot about al la Gail Porter with a head as bald as a babies arse.

To cover up the baldness, and remove myself from other peoples points of view and my own… brings on a mighty array of armoury. But bathing, swimming, hot days, trying on hats, dancing, wind, fairground rides, leaning forwards or backways, earrings, open top cars, car ferries, trying clothes on, even holding a friends baby… all risk suddenly revealing a bald head. Intimacy… even someone stroking your ‘hair’ or pushing it from your eyes…. Is to be avoided less you be revealed. There is now nothing more terrifying than a group hug… or indeed an arm around your shoulder… the weight of another’s limb can make a cover-up slip and reveal all. For the last couple of years, those meeting me for the first time find me quite devoid of physical warmth and cordiality... but really I just don’t want them to knock something off my head!

Suddenly you have to rethink a whole lot of things. Including travel abroad.

So… off to sunny Spain I went. The country that gave us the chignon, the flower in the hair, the sexy senorita with the beautiful, gleaming tresses. The country headlining the fashionistas bible with a little bag designer called Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada, fashion house called Balenciaga, and a shoe maker called Manolo Blahnik. The country where style is EVERYTHING… from head to toe. I am pleased to report that I committed no crimes of fashion….My shoes matched the bag, my personal style drew the odd compliment… But my hair WAS very different from the local senoritas.

Oh I rocked it… in a short black cute wig called The Dali. After the area’s famous surrealist artist. I thought it was fitting!