Give me a head with hair, long beautiful hair.
Shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen.
Give me down to there hair, shoulder length or longer
Here baby, there, momma, ev’rywhere, daddy, daddy.
Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Hair, hair, hair. Flow it, show it,long as God can grow it, my hair.
– Hair, The Cowsills (1969)
Hair … something that grows on top of my head. It needs to be managed and groomed. I don’t tend to think about it much, that is until it annoys me.
The fact is my hair grows like a weed. It is thick and full of bounce and in many respects it has a complete life of its own. It resists being managed and finding a hairdresser that knew what to do with it hasn’t always been easy.
I used to grow my hair long. Then one day I did the unimaginable, I had it cut to shoulder length. So began my gradual descent into the world of short hair. As far as I was concerned the shorter my hair was the better, although my love of this kind of hair style was not shared by others. Every now and again I would start growing my hair longer but it would always reach a point where it didn’t feel right and I knew it had to go.
I never much think of hair as a statement but it is. Our hair styles tell a story all of their own – of a time and place in our own lives and in history. When we look back on old photos we invariably laugh at how we look. Our hair and our clothes were different then. We may even ask ourselves, “What was I thinking?”
When I stop to think about it I realise that my hair has served me incredibly well over the years even with minimal expenditure of time and energy on my part. I’d like to stress that doing anything with my hair is not something I particular enjoy, it is merely something that I do because it needs to be done (I’m still vain and I want to look good). This attitude of mine was highlighted to me when one of my daughter’s said to me many years ago, as I was doing something with her hair, “Let’s face it mama, doing hair is not your forte. You should leave it to us, we do it better.” After initially bursting into laughter and agreeing with her a huge sense of relief overtook me. I was pleased to hand over this daily task. Ironically, I was always the mother backstage in the changing rooms putting every one’s hair into buns (hairpins, bun nets, hairspray all became my friends) before ballet performances. I’d also be strategically placing whatever accoutrement needed be on every one’s head – and make sure it stayed there for the entire performance. I would also be able to manage changing hairstyles throughout the evening. This kind of hair stuff I was good at.
When my son, Damian, was undergoing chemotherapy (as a 10 year old) he had to face the reality that he was going to lose all his beautiful blonde hair. He was told that when it grew back it would be different. Apparently it tends to grow back darker and curlier. That would have been okay only his hair never grew back apart from a few wispy bits here and there on his scalp. So from the age of 10 my son Damian has been bald.
Damian’s hair began to fall out fairly early on in his treatment regime. His party trick was to put his hand to his head and pull out chunks of hair. Everything was covered in hair during that time – in fact I was amazed as to how much hair there actually was on that tiny head. I had to use the vacuum cleaner to get rid of all the hair from his clothing and bedding before I washed it otherwise everything in the machine would become hairy.
During one visit to the hospital to have the latest chemo cocktails fed into Damian’s veins the doctor suggested to him that he do something radical with his hair before it all falls out.
“Why don’t you dye it different colours or have different shapes cut into it?” she suggested. Damian looked at her stunned and said, “Do you think I’m crazy. I’m not doing that.”
Today’s photo of the mannequin in the Adidas shop window display reminded me of all this.
Hair … we love it … we hate it … we don’t think about it … we can change its colour, its style, its length … whatever we do with it we can usually undo it – we can shave it all off if necessary and start again … for most of us it will grow back. Whatever we do is only short lived but it says so much about us and our lives. No matter what our hair will be different tomorrow because we’re different.
As an aside, I will never forget as a young woman going to the State Opera House here in Wellington (oh, this is so going to age me) to attend the live stage performance of the musical show Hair which brought us such great songs like Let the Sunshine In, Aquarius and of course Hair itself … so this is a little trip down memory lane for me. I hope you enjoy it too.
Manifesto
12. Every day love yourself.
45. Every day you are a different person.
48. Every day there are things you can’t change. You can change the way you think about them and deal with them.
![[Facebook]](http://freshnewday.net/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook.png)
![[Twitter]](http://freshnewday.net/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/twitter.png)
![[Email]](http://freshnewday.net/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)
