This Has Little To Do With Flowers, and Is Mostly About Hair

Last year at this time, the gazanias were blooming everywhere. This year, they're not. It's been too dim and chill. Yesterday, the high was about 63. Today, it was 80-something.

But that's not what this entry is about. What's on my mind is hair.

My friend Lydia says that I am a shaving fetishist, but that's not true. If I was one, I'd shave my legs more than once a winter, and maybe become one of those ladies who remove their eyebrows and paint them on so that they don't show the white and gnarly hairs.

About a year and a half ago, I shaved my head. It was an impulsive promise that I made to a friend who was facing chemotherapy; she was so freaked out by the "disfigurement" of losing her hair that she was buying wigs and hats even before the treatment started. I promised her that having no hair was no big deal, so I'd shave my head when she started chemo.

People have since told me that I was "so brave" and "so loyal" and "so nice/supportive/etcetera etcetera etcetera" but the real truth is that I just got mad that hair is so important to our image-mad society. Number One, I hated seeing my friend afraid. Two, I think I was just looking for an excuse to try life with no hair on my head.

I don't like seeing people in fear. My reasoning was this: if my friend saw me with no hair, when hers fell out, she'd have company, and a (somewhat lunatic) role model. And that was fine. When her hair got so sparse that she had to have her husband buzz the stray bits down to nothing, she called me on the phone, and laughing, said, "Now I look like you." That was good. I liked that. We spent the autumn and early winter with no hair; Christmas her hair began to return and I stopped the regular shaving.

I swore I'd never do it again. People drew away from me and my shaven head as though I had leprosy. They would look away quickly if I looked at them staring at me. There were lots of whispers, but only three persons actually had the nerve to ask me about the new hairstyle. I did feel naked, a freak.

By the following March, I was quite fluffy with hair again; by July, the sweat was trickling down the back of my neck under my mop and I was remembering how cool and breezy having no hair was. I gave a hairdresser a near-coronary by having her shear my hair on the sides and back to 1/2" and just leave me about an inch and a half on top.

I've had some time to think about hair, and the lack of. When I didn't have hair, no one crowded me at church on Sunday. Old men didn't look me up and down when we sat at the bar. When I went riding, I could just pour cool water over my head when I was too hot. Towelling off after swimming took seconds. I never had hat hair, or pillow hair. Or a bad hair day.

Why do women need fluffy hair, or long hair? Or cutely-styled hair? Since when are we People of Hair? Men get too hot or too bored or too busy and shave their hair off at whim ...

Which is all to say that I think I'm ready to do the dirty deed again. This time, no high ideals, no allegedly altruistic reasons. I'm just sick of hair hanging in my face, and not having a regular salon whose artists can be trusted to treat my hair with the care it deserves. I'm tired of going to a bee-yoo-ty parlor and having the hairdresser try to put some old lady cut on me. I've had enough of painful knot-pulling when I comb my hair before leaving the house. I think I'm ready.

Crazy?

Who.

Cares.