She ran her hands through it, tipped her head back and felt it sliding deliciously over her skin. I watched my small daughter watching herself in the mirrors that surrounded her and I marvelled. Three months shy of her eighth birthday, and already she understood. Already she had grasped the gift of a great haircut.
Last week Jane wrote to me of her neighbour, a woman who is dying. Jane was puzzled why, when death was imminent, you would bother getting your hair cut in a radically different way as this woman had. Until, she said, she realised that while every other joy, every other choice was being stripped from her; going from dark to light, from long to short, here was something her neighbour could still do for herself.
For most women I know, having their hair cut is a significant experience; the power to change, for better or worse, their sense of self. From an early age we are told our hair is our "crowning glory". We envy those with "good" hair, bemoan our "bad" hair, and pity those who struggle with the shame of losing theirs. We see our mothers pulling out their grey hairs, hiding them with dye, until, with a gradual grieving, they finally let them be.
It is not only the result of visiting the hairdresser that we attach importance to, but the process itself. Xenia described herself as a "rushing woman mother", and apologised for the errors in her email. She was, she wrote, at the hairdresser's, which for her is a "newspaper-in-hand, precious kid-free moment". In salons, those steamy, perfumed dens, we are capable of revealing extraordinary intimacies. As they knead our scalps over the basin, touching us with a familiarity a lover does not always enjoy, we come to think of hairdressers as confidantes, counsellors, friends even.
