All's Hair in Love and War
Embracing our roots.
The worst part of being a writer is the need to promote your own work. Historically, I have always been bad about this as it feels eMbArRaSsiNg, but growth is uncomfortable, and so I am making an uncomfortable ask: if you enjoy this newsletter, will you share it with your world or with a friend who might like it? Thank you.
Name a part of your body you’ve thought about more than your hair.
Actually, scratch that. Bad lede—I can disprove my own argument with the final month of my three overdue summer pregnancies, a hot, interminable period where I thought about my womb with such unwavering singularity for weeks at a time (am I dilated? how much, if so? what about effaced? what will happen if I eat pineapple/have sex/run down stairs/pound dates?) it impresses me even now.
Back to hair. There’s no untangling its grip on us. We can pretend we don’t care, but we do. Women, of course, but men too, particularly if they’re losing their hair. Ask any balding man what he would be willing to do if he could just keep his hair. Even the most sensible and grounded of them has an answer. Consider the existence of a “bad hair day” or a “good hair day.” There are no bad face days, or bad skin days, or bad belly days, although each of those body features are just as in flux as our hair. Hair is different.
Deep down, we want to believe we could be a different person anytime we choose, and the proof grows right on our head. What else is so permanently entwined with our identity and also so immediately changeable? Hair is a signal flag to the world, a personal press statement we can release and revise at will.
Changing one’s hairstyle to herald some kind of personal change is common language, but only new moms get mocked for it. Leaving aside the obvious practical motivations like hair pulling and cost/benefit analysis of maintenance, jokes about “mom cuts” also miss the bigger point entirely. A child completely remodels a woman from the inside, sometimes leaving her a stranger in her own body. Maybe a different hairstyle can bridge the before and after; maybe a new exterior can reconcile a new interior.
More proof that hair is how we tell the world who we are: boys, age nine to eleven years old. Eager to assert their independence and their identity, they realize that hair is the quickest way to get there. When this revelation lands on them, it lands heavy, and they are equally lead-footed in their transformation. Gels, styling waxes, little tubs of pomade or paste show up in their bathroom drawers, although, again, they are nine, so before long, the lid is perpetually sticky and often left separated from its mate. Sometimes they’re like my husband: a young man of strong vision but not enough years to have any taste yet so he asked for and received a perm (!!!) as a sweet baby middle-schooler.
I have a terrible track record with haircuts. Professional haircuts, at least. Most of my life, even this far into adulthood, I’ve perched on the bathroom counter every eight-ish weeks so my mom could give me a simple, straight haircut that is free, risk-averse, and most importantly, doesn’t make me cry after. Recently, I decided it was time for a change. When it comes to the care-and-keeping-of type expenses, I am unbelievably low maintenance. Lower, even, then my preschool aged children who do get professional haircuts. I did what any reasonable modern woman in need of a hair stylist does: I solicited my Instagram followers for recommendations. Ultimately, I booked with the person who had the earliest opening because when a woman is ready to change her hair, she’s ready to change her life now.
Call it intuition or call it judgy: I knew it would be bad from the moment I walked into the salon. We talked about what she would do. She spoke in shrugs and maybes, deference. I wanted declarations, pronouncements, expertise, the magic key. I wanted everything to be different. As she rounded the final stretch of the appointment, I stared at my horrible hair in the mirror while she blow-dried it, a grim ticker tape running through my mind. Then, inexplicably, I handed over my card for $85 dollars of product and let her schedule another cut two months down the road. (Women understand.)
Doing a regrettable thing to your hair is a universal experience. If you haven’t taken a wrong turn, you aren’t old or restless enough yet. In our defense, there are so many ways to go wrong and they all seem right. There’s fantasy—this is one reason why women bleach their hair to go blonde and also why people who own 1970s ranch houses cover their walls in shiplap. There’s total reset: the pixie, the shaved head, the perm. And there’s impatience: every flavor of too-short, too-light, or too-dark. Of course, I haven’t even mentioned bangs yet. Bangs are like opioids: you should only be allowed to get them under the watchful observance of people who care about you.
I didn’t cry after the haircut, a real victory considering that the last professional cut I had received more than an actual decade ago had sent me, a person who rarely cries, into a sobbing spiral. Then again, this cut wasn’t that bad of a cut. It was bad in that it looked barely discernible from before once I had undone the stylist’s processing and handling. In fact, I don’t know if anyone would have even known I had gotten a cut, which brings me to another unfortunate truth about hair: we are all thinking about our own hair all the time and no one else is.
I have curly hair, and my curl pattern is just loose enough that my hair really swings a wide pendulum of spring, frizz, and bounce depending on a number of factors I can identify (wash day, drying style, drying time, humidity) and a bunch I can’t. What I am saying is that a good hair day looks very different from a bad hair day, and I don’t think anybody in my life can really tell. As therapists love to remind us, two things can be true. You’d think this knowledge of our relative invisibility would be freeing, severing us from the tethers of time and money that go into the maintenance of our hair. We could do our best and then fly away unbothered, but we don’t. I think often about a clip from Fleabag where the main character, confronting her sister’s hair stylist about a terrible hair cut, declares: “Hair is everything. We wish it weren’t so we could actually think about something else occasionally, but it is.”
The siren song of hair is always what it could be and what it could say. It could be fluffed, smoothed, cut, shaped, colored, and sprayed to our wishes—often immediately—and that amount of control is gratifying. Even on a smaller, everyday scale, hair gives us the power to make a change—a silky blowout, a quick messy topknot, a hat—that offers comfort in contrast to the other realities of our body that are fixed or much harder to move. But anyone who has experienced hair loss, hair trauma, or even discrimination connected to their hair understands that control is only an illusion. We can’t change the roots, the DNA that’s coded inside us.
We can change our hair—and ourselves—pretty significantly, and life can look different. But the power to change ourselves, our lives, our bodies, and yes, even our hair is not ultimate or comprehensive. A wise woman puts down her blowdryer and takes a Serenity prayer approach to the whole business. Or maybe it’s exactly the opposite—applying the Serenity prayer to hair leads us right back to our round brushes. Holler if you figure out which it is.
In the meantime, my next haircut is scheduled for March 1.
current status
loving :: menu mementos (Food & Wine) // I am inspired by this fresh take on a gallery wall because I, too, save menus from special dinners. Most of mine are creased from where they have been folded to fit in a book or my wallet for their journey home to the keepsake box where they currently live, but I think I might frame them anyway. A restaurant meal can be so special, so transcendent—but also so fleeting. This memorialization helps suspend that magic a little longer.
reading :: The Betrayal (The Atlantic) // We knew the execution of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was America’s shame when it unfolded last year—the image of desperate people falling from a departing American plane is forever seared in my mind. Still, it is excruciating to read this detailed report of what went on behind the scenes: Biden’s obstinacy, America’s maddening bureaucratic crawl to take action, the suffering of the Afghan people, the selfless courage of individual service members who stepped up to get people out. George Packer’s piece is long and hard to read, but important to bear witness.
cooking :: Shrimp with Herby White Beans and Tomatoes // In my editorial assignments, I’m working on spring and summer stories, thinking about warm weather recipes—so it’s a bit deflating to return to my real life cooking here in the end of February, the worst month of the year. This simple skillet dinner from Epicurious has helped answer my cravings for fresher flavors. The herby, garlicky green sauce (brightened significantly by big handfuls of mint) swirled into the creamy beans delivers that lift I’m looking for in the last of the cold, grey weeks. Definitely serve with plenty of toasted bread for dipping.
reading :: “Police in This Tiny Alabama Town Suck Drivers into A Legal Blackhole” (AL.com) // If you need a clear picture of why funding municipal budgets through police fines and forfeitures is a bad idea (i.e. incentivizing arrests and charges), please read this investigative report about a small Southern town with low crime rates where: “From 2018 to 2020, spending on police rose from $79,000 to $524,000, a 560% increase,"although the level of crime had not risen. Why does a town of 1200 people that reported only 55 serious crimes total during 2011-2018 (none of them rape or homicide) need to equip their police department with a tank, SWAT team training, and riot gear? Why do the police go from towing 50 vehicles in 2018 to 789 in 2020 – each carrying fines (a 1,478% increase with more tows than households!)? Brookside, AL has now earned itself a reputation for “policing for profit” — an approach that damages communities, individual lives, and the effectiveness of police work itself.
listening :: Two podcast episodes I’m still thinking about: 1) The Cathedral (Reply All) — listen if you are prepared to have your heart cracked open by love and grief. 2) Who Do You Want Controlling Your Food? (The Daily) — a very illuminating and depressing report about the state of beef in the U.S. and how we got here. / Band of Horses — They just dropped some new singles, which prompted me to give their back catalogue a listen again, taking me right back to college. I’m into it!! / My husband’s coworker (Hey Brian!) has a gift for making playlists and we’ve been really feeling his “Sundays” playlist for laidback moods. / Faith of My Father — Steffany Gretzinger offers her renditions of the simple worship songs I grew up on, and they have been deeply encouraging for my soul.
drinking :: Rosy Cheeks // In the mood for a quick cocktail while cooking dinner, I made this little drink up and it proved simple and delightful—candy-like. In a shaker filled with ice, shake together 1 1/2 oz. Cocchi Rosa, 11/2 oz. gin, and 1/2 oz. fresh lemon juice until chilled. Strain into a coupe glass.
practicing :: car line flossing // I’m not a very consistent flosser, never have been. But at my last dentist appointment, my hygienists pulled a good cop, bad cop routine on me, except that the bad cop came first (ice queen, mean) and the good cop (cute, complimentary) smiled at me sympathetically and said, “Maybe you have a kid carpool line you could use to floss???” I do have a school pickup line and I decided to take his advice for a spin—to great success! Nothing revolutionary about this technique: it’s basic habit stacking, and research has shown it’s one of the more successful ways to implement a new habit. Apparently, I just needed the nudge. Maybe this is yours.
reading :: Klara and the Sun (Kazuo Ishiguro) // Ishiguro turns a story about solar-powered AI companions into a moving exploration of love, mortality, grief, and the compromises we make to keep up with technology. A subtler theme that has lingered with me is the terrible weight of choice we must make as parents—guiding our children when we’re often in the dark ourselves. An aside: I really love the book’s cover design—the color, the simplicity, the font. It feels like such a visual relief amid the current design trend of The Blob (seriously, click through to that one).
the real feel
Working part-time with children has cured me of much of the preciousness that bubble wraps creative work, especially writing. When the deadline’s thundering toward me, it no longer matters if the music is right, the coffee is flowing, or the distractions are banished. I have conducted interviews from my car in parking garages, written in hot, squirmy sunshine with a kid splashing in a plastic pool next to me, and dictated whole paragraphs of copy in car line. There is only so much time, and my children command a lot of it.
So when the childcare clock is running down, I have to get on with writing, and I’ve done so in enough spots to know that trendy coffee shops are not the place for serious work. The coffee might be quality, but the chairs usually aren’t. The hustle vibes are motivating, but the conversations are distracting. The best place is a good hotel lobby—a vast expanse of bland, corporate, liminal space. A hotel lobby offers the same anonymity and adrenaline you find in airports or on public transit, just muted. The feeling of being a stone in a stream—smooth, faceless—while the world moves around me unimpeded is immensely productive, like noise-canceling headphones for my brain. I treasure this feeling, and so I am careful to avoid visiting the hotel lobby too often in order to preserve the magic. I guess…..you might say it’s precious.
last words from someone else
Until March — look for the light lengthening at day’s end, put something fun on your calendar, try a new perfume, take a shower in the complete dark.
adoring fans want to see photos of young Jivan with his perm!