Why DO older women feel the need to crop their hair?
who swears she will never cut hers
AS A child growing up in the Sixties I had short hair; so short, in fact, that strangers would often pat me on the head and call me sonny.
I was a bit of a tomboy — I wore shorts or jeans and favoured den-building over playing with dolls — so I don’t recall being remotely perturbed by this until I reached adolescence.
Once the hormones kicked in, I started to covet long hair that could be curled, braided or worn as a swishy ponytail, and I remember asking Mum tentatively if I could grow mine.
She tried to dissuade me by saying short hair was fashionable. ‘You’ve got a Beatle cut!’ she reminded me. I didn’t have the presence of mind to point out that the Fab Four were male.
But Mum equated long hair with frivolity and vanity, traits she did not want to encourage in her daughters, so the nononsense crop persisted until I reached 14, grew my hair long and resolved never to have it cut short again.
Forty-five years, on I’m still sticking to my resolution, and every time a hairdresser has threatened me with a nice, short, ageappropriate bob I’ve run for the hills.
I can see now that my childhood boy cut was a boon to my dear mother, who, as a full-time teacher, scrambled to get my younger sister and me off to school in the morning without the faff of dragging a comb through a tangled mass of knotted hair before elaborately styling it.
Also, when I was growing up, short hair signalled endeavour and seriousness. Consider the hours you could free up for reading, writing and practising the clarinet if you weren’t engaged in styling your long princess tresses.
Doubtless this is the message the world’s senior female politicians are seeking to convey with their no-nonsense, business-like hairdos. This week we were introduced to the political bob — or pob — a short, blonde crop favoured by powerful women across the globe.
PRIMe Minister Theresa May has one in a steely, don’t-mess-withme shade. Whitehouse-hopeful Hillary Clinton styles hers with plenty of root lift and blonde highlights.
Meanwhile, Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and German Chancellor Angela Merkel sport slightly more austere and boyish variants. Then there’s the midi pob, a shoulder-length version chosen by Home Secretary Amber Rudd, Justice Secretary Liz Truss and education Secretary Justine Greening.
According to celebrity hairdresser Julia Carta, all these high-achieving women are conveying the same message through their hair: ‘More precise styles give the impression that women can hack it in the man’s world of politics,’ she says.
‘These women are ruling the world. They don’t want people to be distracted by their hair, so sharper power cuts help them to be taken seriously.’
Of course, there are many examples of very glamorous older women who look enviously stylish with shorter hair. Dames Judi Dench, 81, and Helen Mirren, 71, immediately spring to mind.
Hairdresser to the stars Nicky Clarke is still convinced that if you’re an older woman with long hair, you’ve only got one choice: scrape your hair back and succumb to the bluestocking up-do.
‘Longer hair often needs to be tied back and can appear too prim and proper,’ he says. ‘Otherwise if it is loose it can appear frivolous.’
I have two observations for Mr Clarke: first, he’s 58, so shouldn’t he also be shearing his own luxuriant, leonine mane?
Second, I think there should be no rules about women’s age and hair length. Why should we all submit to a pob and become clones when we reach 50? Why should we strive to look more like men and equate a mannish cut with seriousness and efficiency?
Bring on the middle-aged Rapunzel, I say. Let’s hear it for the great unshorn!
I’m 59 — the same age as Mrs May — and I have hair that reaches the middle of my back.
If people choose to think this makes me ditzy and inconsequential, it’s up to them, but I have long hair for several reasons, not least because it makes me feel empowered and happy.
I had short hair when I went to grammar school, by which time The Beatles were well into their hippy phase and I couldn’t even pretend it was a homage to them.
‘Why is your hair so short?’ asked a pretty girl called Juliette, pointing out unkindly that as I also had sticky-out ears, I looked like a chimpanzee.
Adolescence is a tricky time even if you’ve got long and lustrous hair. But because mine was never permitted even to graze the top of my shirt collar, I continued to look like a boy in a skirt and be the butt of my schoolmates’ jokes.
For ages, it didn’t occur to me to grow my hair. Not, that is, until my male woodwork teacher suggested it would look nice longer — probably to lessen the chance of mistaking me in my overalls for a boy and start calling me Frank.
I remember feeling mortified. With quiet and dogged persistence, I started to grow it. To my surprise, it turned out to be ‘good’ hair: thick, shiny and biddable, it could be styled any way I chose.
Having long hair changed my life — the correlation was a simple one: long hair made me happier.
And as my hair grew, so did my confidence. I wasn’t bullied any more. I acquired a boyfriend, Craig. He was in a band! He played the drums! He wasn’t a geek! Suddenly I was accepted and acceptable.
That’s when I resolved defiantly to never have it lopped off again.
I do not believe those of us with long hair should be stigmatised as cougars or batty old dears. On the whole, I think long, conditioned hair makes us look more youthful.
Besides, I fear the self-exposure of having short hair more than the ignominy of being considered too old for long hair. I won’t even wear mine in a ponytail because bereft of hair I feel so vulnerable.
Without my hair I’m like Samson — enfeebled. Long hair blurs the edges of my jowls; it detracts from features I dislike. Actually, it is me.
Psychologist Vivian Diller, author of Face It: What Women Really Feel As Their Looks Change, points out: ‘In young women, thick, lustrous hair is associated with fecundity, sensuality and sexuality. Correspondingly, as we enter middle age, thinning hair is associated with loss of health, decreased fertility and virility.’
This is one reason why I, and so many other women in late middleage, cling tenaciously to our long, thick hair. It makes us feel young.
THeRe are multifarious ways in which we can cheat time: conditioners, unguents, oils, thickeners and dyes are potent weapons in our armoury.
Unlike our grandmothers, we are no longer compelled to slide gracefully into permed and blue-rinsed old age. So why do our female leaders opt for ageing pobs? ‘Many women — and men — associate confidence with feeling in control, and hair is one way most of us can be in charge,’ says Dr Diller. ‘It can be altered through cutting and colouring, but controlled through styling.’
Well-kept hair is, she extrapolates, an outward manifestation of being inwardly in control.
Which brings me back to those days when I sat unwillingly in the hairdresser’s chair to be shorn of the feature that later came to define me. I wasn’t in control.
This is why I’d never succumb to a pob. It would make me feel subjugated and disempowered; quite the opposite of Theresa May, Angela Merkel, Nicola Sturgeon and Hillary Clinton, in fact.