Haircuts | Thornfield Hall

Several years ago, I won an award for an essay. It’s lovely to win an award, even if you just get a plaque or certificate, which you immediately lose, and which surfaces years later in a filing cabinet.

Later, I won an award I’d never heard of. Of course it was an honor, as all these thing are, but it seemed to be an award for winning OTHER awards. And I may have been called a Person to Watch. Now that made me nervous. If I were a Person to Watch, I needed good hair.

I ran to the mirror. All I can say is, the hair was very short. I considered it wash-and-wear. That was the only description for it.

I tried combing my hair, tried brushing it, stuck a barrette in it, and that was as good as it got.

I’ve got to do better than this, I thought. So I got on the phone to Mom. “There’s this award. And I have to get my photo taken.”

“Oh, I can’t wait to get a photo! You’ll be the most adorable one there.”

Of course I wasn’t adorable, but she gushed about us kids all the time, and naturally she was pleased with the award that seemed to me a disaster. The hair issue didn’t register with her.

Then I consulted my loveliest friend. She thought I should forget the hair and concentrate on a makeover. A makeover? On TV the before is always better than the after!

I confided that I was allergic to makeup. Years ago after studying Clinique ads in a women’s magazines, I purchased Clinique makeup and applied it thoroughly. Unfortunately, I developed a horrible rash. The dermatologist gave me an ointment, told me I was allergic to Clinique, and advised me not to wear makeup again.

My friend pooh-poohed that – “What do dermatologists know?” -and before I knew it I was sitting on a stool at the makeup counter, and a clerk was applying various magic powders, cremes, and mascara, then brushed my hair up high on my head.

My friend and the makeup artist looked uneasy. I had known it would go wrong! Actually, I didn’t recognize myself: I looked like a low-end hooker at the Holiday Inn, with high teased hair and too much eye makeup.

My friend said not a word about the makeup, but we went upstairs to scrub it off.

But one good thing came out of it: Mom loved the photo.

Shelley Duvall in “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”

“I’m not doing that anymore,” I said fiercely. “All that money for this!”

If you’re a woman, you’ll intuit my meaning. Of course I’m talking about hair. Last winter, a stylist gave me a bad haircut, which is difficult to do, since I’m a wash-and-go gal.

Was it the worst haircut I’ve had? That would be hard to say. It was bad. Very bad. But I remember years ago after cutting my beautiful long hair for the first time, I sobbed and went from salon to salon trying to get it fixed. My mother had warned me not to cut it. She said it would never grow back the same. I should have “let my freak flag fly,” as Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young advised in their song, “Almost Cut My Hair.” Even my mother thought so.

There has been crying and devastation in the past. In my twenties, I emerged from a salon with a hairdo that managed to be both poufy and ragged. It was a cross between country and punk, i.e., Loretta Lynn and Joan Jett, and not an ideal look for bicyclists. I arrived everywhere with feral hair that grew wilder as I pedaled. I carried a hairbrush in my bike kit and tried to tame my hair before I entered buildings inhabited by humans. I looked forward to bedhead, because it smooshed my hair down. What I noticed: most people have normal hair. I certainly wish I did.

Here’s how to survive a bad haircut. Wear hairpins and barrettes to tame it. Wait for it to grow out. But this recent bad haircut had magical properties. It just wouldn’t stop growing along the same bad lines. It got worse and more unruly

A couple of months ago, I finally cut it myself, with the blunt scissors we use for opening packages.

It lay down flat on my head. “You mean it could have looked like this all the time?”

But then it started to grow. And guess what? It, too, was unmanageable. I had to snip off sections of hair every couple of days. I obviously do not know how to cut hair.

In August, I finally got a good professional haircut. I am so relieved.

In literature women have complicated experiences with their hair, too. Here are some examples.

1 . “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Bernice gets attention by boasting that she’ll have her hair bobbed, and then loses all attraction for men. Poor Bernice!

2. The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. The heroine, Maggie, cuts her own hair as a child after her mother and aunt talk about how unruly it is. And she gets into a lot of trouble.

3. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. In one chapter, Jo sells her hair, her “one beauty!”—to pay for her mother’s train ticket to Washington, D.C., after they received a telegram informing them that Father is ill in a military hospital in Washington, D.C. (He is a Chaplain in the Civil War.) In another chapter, Jo accidentally burns off her sister Meg’s bangs with hair tongs before they attend a dance.

4. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. Anna gets ill and all her beautiful hair has to be cut. What is it about haircuts and illness in the 19th century?

5. The Summer Before the Dark by Doris Lessing. At the end of a summer away from her husband and children, Kate comes to term with aging and stops buying into the consumer culture. She resolves to stop cutting her hair and wear it in a bun, but compromises by continuing to wear “nice” clothes so as to fit in with her family. Her hair is just for her.