Opinion

Anita Robinson: It's the big decision - should I get my hair coloured or let nature take its course?

Lockdown has led to some bad hair days
Lockdown has led to some bad hair days Lockdown has led to some bad hair days

I note with some bitterness that fashion firms are climbing aboard the still-rolling coronavirus bandwagon. Without a scintilla of shame some are marketing the ultimate accessory – a face mask to match or complement your outfit, with the assurance that “a mask can be part of your look, not an alien surgical accessory. It can even add something!” At prices ranging from £15 to £25 each, it certainly does. A fashion diva and her money are soon parted. Oh, and “remember to dramatise your eye make-up. It’s the only bit of your face on view.” That’s right. Don’t spoil the ship for a ha’porth of tar. Surely this is accessorizing to lunatic degree? And all to no avail, because while the embargo on hair salons pertains, one’s hair continues to resemble an acre of whins and one cannot achieve the epitome of ‘coronachic’. Sad face emoji.

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Forgive my on-going preoccupation with hair, but three calendar months from my last professional ‘do’, I’m in dire straits – and, like women everywhere, unwillingly showing my true colours. It gives me no comfort to see that females in the public eye are in no better case. Arlene has become alarmingly bouffant, Michelle’s roots are plainly visible and Diane Dodds is more than halfway to a chin-length bob. Yet among the army of unkempt femininity are some looking suspiciously ‘kempt’. “My hair grows really slowly,” they protest with a straight face. There’s a regrettable lack of solidarity within the sisterhood. It’s every woman for herself when it comes to an illicit cut and colour with a rogue hairdresser.

The most intimate relationship, taking precedence over all others in importance, is that between a woman and her hair. There are those naturally competent with hair – literally ‘a dab hand’ at the application of over-the-counter colourants, who rarely darken the door of a salon when they can darken their roots at home. ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away’ they say, but you can pay a skilled practitioner to get it back. Yet sooner or later comes to every woman the Inevitable Terrible Decision – also known as Elsa’s Option (viz “Let it go! Let it go!”) and watch her carefully cultivated self-image disappear down the plughole. The thing is – am I courageous enough? Am I ready to go ‘au naturel’?

Anita Robinson
Anita Robinson Anita Robinson

I sit before a mirror and a hundred watt bulb to take stock of my options. My reflection reveals an Early Christian martyr in a stained-glass window, with a halo of silver surmounted by a nimbus of faded gold and wearing a mournful expression. I brush my hair back from my face, cover up the goldy bits and look again. Suddenly, I’m the image of my mother as I remember her. I am traumatised. Now, here’s the quandrary. After holding it at very expensive bay for years, do I surrender to the loss of youth and let nature take its cruel course, or become a sad combination of young hair/old face and have people mutter, “Who’s the oul’ doll with the dyed hair?” Or could I emulate an idiosyncratic and dear friend whose quirky pink spray-on highlights became her signature look? There’s something gloomily doom-laden about the word ‘grey’, though another friend is, naturally, an enviably sophisticated shade of tempered steel. A third boasts a lustrous pure white bob. The world is ill-divided. Perhaps, like the eccentric lady in Jenny Joseph’s famous poem, “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple with a red hat which doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me. But maybe I ought to practice a little now? So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised when suddenly I am old and start to wear purple.” Thinks…. I’ll need a whole new wardrobe.

As a regular twice-weekly client I’ve bagged an early appointment for July 7th. Seven more days to wait. Seven more nights of broken sleep in spiky rollers until the nightmare is over and I’m restored to autumnal-toned glory. Or not. Decisions… decisions….