Women and their Hair

On that notorious evening in 2007 when Britney Spears’ life went dramatically into freefall, the most shocking thing about the sequence of events that followed was not that she attacked a photographer’s car with an umbrella, or that she sat sobbing in her SVU before entering a hair salon, it was that she shaved off her hair. The pretty pig-tailed starlet grabbed the clippers from the LA hairstylist, who refused to be the one to rid the American beauty of her signature long locks and aggressively shed them herself in favour of a boyish buzz cut. She stripped herself of the femininity and sexuality she’d built her Billboard-topping career on.

Jodie Foster in her role as Sarah Tobias in the 1988 film The Accused did the same thing after she was brutally raped in a bar. She took a pair of scissors to her soft, shoulder-length caramel waves and literally hacked them off in a fit of rage and frustration. As utterly horrifying as the rape scene was, watching Foster assault herself in this very visceral way was one of the most heartbreaking moments in the movie. While in both these instances, a savage cut was a visual representation of both women’s inner suffering, when others chop off their hair, it’s a statement of pure empowerment. In 2017, model Cara Delevigne shaved her head for the Met Gala and wrote on her Instagram account: “It’s exhausting to be told what beauty should look like.” Actress Rose McGowan wrote in her memoir Brave that she cut her hair short because she no longer wanted to look like a “fantasy fuck toy”. A woman’s relationship with her hair is as much a signifier of her emotional state as bitten nails and dark circles.

Like every aspect of a woman’s appearance, though, the personal often becomes political and it’s no different with our hair.

The short flapper hairstyles of the 1920s caused a scandal and prompted many fathers to try to bring criminal charges against the salons cutting short their daughters’ hair. At this time, long hair signalled a woman’s femininity, her attractiveness as a wife, and her fertility, and so a woman cutting her hair was perceived by the powers that be as an assault on the status quo. In contrast, the long, unkempt hairstyles of the 1970s were a direct protest against the neatly groomed aesthetic of post-war parents as well as the tight hairstyles sported by soldiers fighting the Vietnam War; long hair can be just as powerful a form of protest as short hair. After Donald Trump’s presidential victory in 2016, The Cut reported that there was a wave of women abandoning their softer hairstyles and blonde highlights for dark drastic cuts. Women used the very personal identifier of their hairstyle to state their political position, and to distance themselves from Trump’s misogynistic ideas of what a woman should look like and how she should be treated. Irish academic and TV presenter Emma Dabiri wrote beautifully in her recent book Don’t Touch My Hair about her realisation that the way she styled her hair (chemically straightening it) was at odds with her politics and explained how she came to embrace her tightly coiled hair and her black hair heritage with it.

A woman’s sense of self is intimately tied up with the state of her hair, which is why it’s often used as a weapon, both by us and against us (in the aftermath of WWII, French women who slept with German soldiers had their heads shaved and were paraded as such along the streets of Paris). The furore over the closure of hairdressers during lockdown is proof if any were needed that on the secret score sheets women keep of themselves, hair is pretty high up. I’d be the first to raise my hand and admit I struggled to like myself when my blonde crop got out of hand, which happened fairly quickly into lockdown as it usually gets a monthly tidy up. When I first had my hair cut at age 23, it was like an awakening. I immediately thought, this is who I’m supposed to be. I remember almost everything about that first time – the quirky London salon, the 6’4” male stylist, his slow Greek drawl, the hairstyle references (Zoe Ball circa 1999) and the feeling of euphoria as I skipped outside afterwards looking so completely different, but feeling more like myself than ever before. When my hair lost its identity, so did I, and I guess this is why hair stylists all over the world were being offered several times the going rate to perform illicit cuts for clients. You can’t put a price on a woman’s self-esteem.

Like all of our relationships in midlife, though, the one we have with our hair will evolve, challenge and defy us like every other.

While short hair looks fresh and cool in our youth, it can become stale and predictable in midlife – like the proverbial “mammy” haircut we all dread winding up with – and at 45 I’ve been wondering if my cut has strayed from chic to shabby without me realising it. Being forced to let it grow a little during lockdown did me a service as it convinced me that I’m no more suited to long hair now than I was in my 20s and that my crop hasn’t reached its sell-by-date just yet. Many women are seeing those random stray grey hairs they disingenuously balked at in their 30s multiply menacingly. For others menopause is wreaking havoc on the thickness and texture of their hair, while the conditions and illnesses that begin to affect us in our 40s and 50s can also wreak havoc with our hair, sometimes causing hair loss, which is a devastating outcome for any woman. A close friend of mine began losing her hair in her mid-40s due to very high levels of stress in her life (a bad marriage, being the sole earner, working in an industry that struggled to recover from recession) and it was heartbreaking to witness. Hair loss is an extremely powerful emotional trigger in a woman because our hair has always been treated as some sort of prized possession, a trophy of femininity and attractiveness, especially in this hyper-sexualised Kardashian culture. Beauty guru and radio presenter Louise McSharry said the most difficult thing about her cancer diagnosis in 2014 was the loss of her eyebrows and eyelashes.

In midlife, as at every other stage in life, it’s important to have icons who inspire and encourage you, whether it’s professionally, intellectually or aesthetically, and one of mine is Irish model and age activist Mary Dunne (above, left), who sports silver hair that falls down as far as the arch of her back. She stopped dying her hair blonde at the age of 60 and she looks incredible – fresh, modern and youthful. She’s never felt under pressure to shorten her hair either as many women in midlife and beyond think they ought to. She’s stuck to the style that makes her happy and she radiates confidence because of it. Dublin-based fashion stylist Cathy O’Connor (above, right) is another of my style and hair icons. That unapologetic white badger-style stripe against her chocolate-coloured waves looks utterly original and demonstrates that at 58, she can look as current as any millennial, but with the added advantage of her trademark sophistication.

Grace Jones is another iconic woman worth paying attention to. Not only was the 72-year-old the first person in her school to wear her hair in an afro, but in her 2015 memoir I’ll Never Write My Memoirs, the singer claimed that shaving her head led directly to her first orgasm. It gives a whole new meaning to the term buzz cut.

Marie Kelly, August 2020.