Good hair makes me feel younger and thinner — I cried with joy to get it back
‘WOULD you like a head massage?’ asked Jade, the colourist at Daniel Galvin, her voice muffled by the mask and visor she was wearing. All I could do was nod, as I was actually crying with joy. I was getting my hair back.
What has been the worst thing about lockdown? Apart, obviously, from the tragedy of lives cut short, children missing their education and grandparents missing out on family life?
I suspect, if my experience is anything to go by, that for any woman in the prime of life it has been the forced separation from her hairdresser.
I didn’t think I would feel this way, I have pretty good hair — it’s straight and thick and I mostly wash and go, but I do have it coloured to cover the grey and when my fringe gets too long I feel like a pit pony.
A couple of weeks before lockdown I decided that if we were going to be shut up like the Italians I had be prepared, so I had the full works — a tint to cover the greys, a vegetable rinse for shine and a cut.
‘Be brutal with the length,’ I told the stylist, ‘God knows when I’ll be back.’ It took about three hours and cost more that I want to admit, however in that first grim month of lockdown I was at least able to look at myself in the mirror without shuddering.
But by the end of April, nature had taken its course and my hair was no longer my crowning glory, but a matted tangle that had to be scraped back in a ponytail or hidden under a hat.
Compared to all the other things going on in my life — not being able to see my beloved dad, running a girl-heavy household that, with my two daughters and me, felt like a cross between St. Trinian’s and The Bell Jar with someone always in tears somewhere — the crapness of my hair was not at the top of my anxieties, but it was always in my thoughts like the dull throb of an infected tooth (and yes, I had one of those, too).
I don’t think of myself as old (I am 58), but when I looked at myself in the mirror, grey-rooted and shaggy, I saw what can only be described as a crone.
The crisis came when I was asked to a series of online pitch meetings to Hollywood studios.
Now, I have done these in person and they are gruelling — you talk about your idea for 40 minutes while the executives look at you with dead eyes.
It takes every ounce of confidence I possess to get through one of these pitches, and in the past I have always gone into the room straight from the hairdresser. Going into a pitch is like going into battle, and if my hair is sleek and shiny I feel that I have my armour on.
Standing in front of a computer screen, desperately trying to adjust the angle so that my roots were less conspicuous, is not the way to feel invincible. As I made my pitches to bored-looking executives on the other side of the world, I felt underpowered.
When I emerged from the salon after three glorious hours and got home I had to do a Zoom call with my agent — another woman in the prime of life. She took one look at my hair and said: ‘You look ten years younger, b***h!’
I wish I could say my lockdown lesson was that appearances don’t matter, but actually I have learnt that like Samson, my hair is my secret weapon.
When it looks good I don’t act like a woman of a certain age, I feel powerful. In these desperate times, a visit to the hairdresser is essential business.