Monday, April 04, 2005

a post about hair

Mariah got her hair cut yesterday, after cluttering my bookmarks list for weeks with things like "short cute" and "good bangs" and "AWESOME." (I swear, her vocabulary is really better than that!) She got, in fact, a cute short cut. Ten inches came off--enough to donate the shorn pony tail to Locks of Love, which she will do. (I thought they couldn't take dyed hair, but apparently they can.) Now her blackish purplish goldish hair (black dye, followed by some bleaching to mask the growing-out roots, followed by red streaks which are purply now) is shorter and therefore more streaky-looking. It's a choppy, piecy bob--very Julia Stiles. Or, I fear, Courtney Love, but not really.

I've been thinking about hair lately, and not just because of Mariah's hair cut. It started when I was watching The West Wing recently. Mary McCormack, playing Kate Harper, National Security Advisor, has this total Sheryl Crow-thing going on with her hair. (Not in the imdb picture, but try this one.) Last season whenever I saw her she had it pulled back in a bun or a pony tail, something sort of severe and non-sexual. And now it's all Sheryl Crow, really. So I began to wonder what other professional women I could think of with long hair (besides me)? And there aren't too many, really. And certainly, among the highly-visible classes of professional women, the Condi Rices and Sandra Day O'Connors of the world, are there any? Would a National Security Advisor really have Sheryl Crow hair, in other words? Are they trying to say something about this character, or about women in power, with this hair thing? And if so, what? I know, Janel Maloney/Donna Moss has long hair, too, but it's straight and usually pulled back or at least sleek-looking. Remember all the attention Hillary's hair got? (And still gets, I assume, though not being in NY I see a lot less of her than when she was first lady.)

Me, I've had the professional-woman bob, and I'm just too lazy. It has to be cut so often, and cared for so much more carefully than my artfully messy (or maybe just messy) longer hair. I suppose I could go for an artfully messy short hair look, like Mariah's, but why? Long hair can be pulled up off the back of the neck when it gets really hot and sticky, for example. Plus I'm pretty sure they'll never make me a dean if I keep it long and unprofessional-looking, which is a plus. (OK, they'll probably never make me a dean anyway, but that's another issue...)

Enough about hair.

2 comments:

Becca said...

Me too! Me too! I just grew mine long again this winter out of laziness, but I'm loving it. Usually it's shoulder-length during the year and then longer in the summer, so I can put it up, but this year I just let it keep growing. Last week there was an article in the paper about the radical women who are daring to buck the rule against having long hair past 40. Yet another rule my mother never taught me...

Libby said...

Yes, I'm all about lazy hair--though I do get it cut every couple of months just because I like to hang out with my hairdresser. (sigh)

My mother had long hair until I was in college, so about her mid- late-forties, but she wore it up in a bun. Every.Single.Day. Really. My boyfriend saw it down once, told me "your mom looks ten years younger with her hair down," I told her, and she cut it a week or two later--so she could wear it down. It was in a little bob for a few years and then got really short, so it now looks essentially the same as it did when she was wearing it up. Funny.