Hair

I want long, straight, curly, fuzzy, snaggy, shaggy, ratty, matty

Oily, greasy, fleecy, shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen


Knotted, polka dotted, twisted, beaded, braided


Powered, flowered and confettied


Bangled, tangled, spangled and spahettied

Flow it, show it


Long as God can grow it,  hair.....

We start with a tuft & end up bald ~ or if you're white blond as I was for so many years, you just look bald.  Start dark, go blond & red & end up a dirty ratty brown until the salt & pepper streaks take over & you start praying for the soft & pure white of old age. Hair.

Women of a certain age no longer have hair; they have a *style* ~ & they keep it cropped short & immaculate though thankfully the *blue rinse* has gone out of fashion.  Not me. I had to fight for my long hair. 

My father disliked long hair on a woman & to please him my mother always kept hers short & immaculate ~ but my mother has hair that behaves itself.  It has waves & body & it grows in the shape it is cut & stays that way!  My brother got hair like my mother & so wasted on a man.  I got the other lot's hair, the fine, silky, fly~away stuff that is straighter than a ruler; the stuff that has a flat follicle that means it doesn't matter what the hairdresser does to it, it is never going to hold a perm for longer than an hour or two.  No body.  It falls from the crown in a dubious halo, wafting airily on every breeze like fine web & in desperation my mother kept it cropped shorter than my brothers'.  No other little girl I ever knew growing up was made to wear her hair that way.  They had plaits & bobs, pig~tails & pony~tails.  They had pretty ribbons & bobbles, clips & clasps & fancy combs; headbands & scarves, & barrettes, bobby pins [kirby grips?] with stars on the ends.  I had the shorter than short basin cut.

About grade one or two I started agitating for change.  I wanted hair.  Lots of it.  As much as I could get.  I was tired of constantly being mistaken for a boy.  As things turned out hair down to my waist didn't change much that way.  I was long & lanky & completely minus any curves & in the 60s & 70s it wasn't only girls who had long flowing hair down to their waists.

My mother, in desperation, would put my hair up in curlers ~ those ugly spiky things that dug into the scalp, but her best efforts, after the first radiant flush, quickly wilted to a limp & bedraggled crow's nest.

I flirted with a *style* round about grade 10/11.  It was a disaster & I promptly began growing my hair back again.  I chopped it off completely when the twins arrived.  It was too impractical & I didn't have time to look after it properly but I missed it.  I didn't like all the time I had to spend in the hairdressers or the money it cost & it never looked nice except for about a week just before it was due to be cut again. I hate hairdressers.  They are a migraine waiting to happen.

Eventually I got tired of the whole circus, tired of constant trips to the hairdressers, constantly needing to find that $20 for something I didn't much like anyway & gradually trips to the hairdressers grew further & further apart until one day I realised that my hair was growing out , long enough indeed for me to realise I'd already started growing it again.  Besides I like the weight of hair flowing down my back.  I like the way it shakes loose from the twist I usually keep it in so it's out of my way.  I like that my man likes it long & flowing & that my girls, when little, liked to play with it.  Star would brush it for hours.  I like how a plait bobbing down my back amuses the cats.   I like long hair on little girls.  It is pretty & feminine but the wheel always turns full circle.  My girls have opted for something in between, neither ultra short nor super long, Liddy from choice, Star because, well, it's just easier for what she does but she has visions of something short & radical & dyed strangely violent colours.

Back in the sixties they sang about hair.  A whole play about it even.  My mother very nearly went to see it when it came to Sydney.  Brisbane probably banned it.  Hair, the play, had  both nudity & profanity & was really quite bizarre & my mother never did go to see it.   Much later I read the book about the Broadway production & decided that was probably a wise choice.