Prose - Hair

Hair is a funny thing, we all value it in some way, even men. Maybe especially men, if they are going bald. Now that it is such a popular style, even men who aren’t balding are shaving their heads. Hell, even women are shaving their heads. Sometimes its difficult to tell anymore, if people are going through chemotherapy or just creating style.
Style seems to be the word of the day. Is style going to be as important, now that the economy is shifting downward? Can style possibly be foremost on people’s minds when we are just attempting to cover the bases of survival? I asked the woman who cuts my hair to give me a cut that doesn’t require product. She did her best, I did my best. My hair was so non-active, it clung to my head with no where to go. I can see life without product looks quite dull from this lifeless mop on top of my head. Maybe I should stock up on some of my favorite gels and mousses, in case the shelves do become bare in these crashing times.
I got into hair at a very early age. I gave myself a haircut when I was only three or four. It was quite choppy, of course, so my Mom had to cut even more of my very fine, cotton-top, straight as a board threads, that were left.
I’ve definitely spent too much time through the years fixing and being concerned about hair. There was the bleach blond, bouffant style of the early sixties. This grew into the French twist. Then it grew so long, it weighted me down. The long, straight, parted in the middle hippie hair came next, which eventually turned into the long permed hair that got comments of Jane Fonda in the movie, Coming Home. Eventually, it was cut off very short to accommodate camping trips and vision quests, low maintenance hair. Now, in the post-menopausal years, my hair is unruly, curly some days, and very straight other days. I was taken aback one evening at book club when a member said, as I was standing under a light, “wow, your hair is silver!”. Silver? Funny, I had thought, as my hair has been turning gray, it looked high-lighted, streaked with platinum, as it was, once upon a time. I did keep up that pretense for a while. But it was short then, and took too much time and money to sit with foils in my hair. Oh, the things we women (and men) do to keep up the outside of ourselves. I guess my mirror had been playing tricks with me around my graying hair. Or was it my eyes and ego?
Do women in the middle eastern cultures, who keep their heads covered most of the time, concern themselves with their hair as much as we do? Maybe looking at other cultures, we women of the world can all learn from one another. I feel, deep inside, most of us would like to transform all this hair fixation. Yet, its been part of history for thousands of years, creating individuality. The ideal is to make the most of our God-given gifts, whether its our hair or what we hold inside ourselves. Maybe working with our hair is our way of connecting with The Divine on a level that deletes the outer superficiality. I’ve always wanted to be a redhead. Will that be the outer manifestation of bringing the fire of my being into greater form?
Patricia