Hair is important

“If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle.” 

― Hillary Rodham Clinton

In 2007, I let my hair go gray and blogged about it because Rae asked me to. I even blogged about saying 'grey' vs. 'gray.' What can I say? I love words and their meanings and their origins and nuances. Anyway, it took a lot of courage to go grey/gray and I did it for five years. It's gone through several iterations in that time: short, long, highlights, short, long, longer. For the last few years it's been entirely my own colors -- white, grey, silver, brown. Lately I've been feeling like I'm just enduring it. 

I went to a party in Chicago and a week or so later saw photos of myself. I looked like what I promised myself I would never look like -- an older woman with frizzy grey hair. I thought about it for awhile. I'm living with someone who likes my hair long and that was an important consideration. But there was that feeling. So I polled my girlfriends and my two daughters -- everyone said "Cut it" in varying degrees, "but not too short!" They know what I'm capable of.

I trust my hairdresser so I made an appointment, sat down and said, "If I told you to do whatever you thought was right for me what would that be?" She looked suddenly happy because she is an artist and every artist knows that hearing those words is like being given heaven on a plate. We had a lot of fun and this is the result. I was ready for something different.

“Red hair, sir, in my opinion, is dangerous.”

― P.G. Wodehouse, Very Good, Jeeves!

"People always ask me how long it takes to do my hair.

I don’t know, I’m never there.”― Dolly Parton