Hestia considers her hair

Warning: Keep away from naked flames (and guns)

I need to make a confession to you.  See that picture of me that pops up on your blog?  You know, the one with the Noel Cowerd arch expression?  Well, it IS me, but it is hugely different from how I actually look:  I am to that picture what flour is to a Victoria Sponge - I am IN it, but have been so hugely transformed by the other ingredients that you'd be hard-pressed to spot the original weevil amongst the fluffery and puffery of cream and jam.

In that pic, not only am I made up to the nines, I have Had My Hair Done.

God, I hate my hair.


I commented on Modesty Brown's blog that I laugh angrily at shampoo adverts.  Truthfully, it's a stab of self-loathing I experience when I see these adverts with the swooshy-haired girls mocking me with their pearl-enhanced shiny manes and goddamned 'styled with hair extensions' trickery.

More than anything in the world - I would love to have had swooshy hair.  I want swooshy hair more than world peace or straight, white teeth.

It's a selfish desire, but frankly, world peace will be easier to achieve.

My hair is coarse and curly.  Perhaps if it was waist-length, I could achieve a kinda pre-raphelite fluffy uniqueness, but being so curly, it is nigh-on impossible to make it look longer than collar length.

Visits to the hairdresser have always been horrific.

Since I first had my locks shorn off at 10 (a late and dreadful case of head-lice....thank you Andrew Stocks) and my dad walked straight past me as I waited for him outside the salon, visits have filled me with dread.

My next styling was in a hip joint in my home town.  I went straight from school (secondary) filled with naive hope that their scissors were magic, and had to endure the humiliation of hearing the staff laughing as I traipsed my new Betty Boop look out into the rain.  I walked home, angry tears stinging my eyes, my uniform soaked through and my Betty Boop styling mercifully ruined.  My furious mum got me an apology, but the cruel juniors had just confirmed what I had already believed - my hair was just shit.

The Purdy, the Farrah Fawcett flicks, the Rachel...they all passed me by as my unruly coarse curls refused to be tamed.

I got it all cut off, hoping for a gamine Audrey Hepburn look.  But I don't have the pixie features to be able to make a short cut look cool.  I just look like someone's granny.

The arrival of straighteners was like a religious experience for me.  The first time I saw that back of the head mirror shot and my hair...swooshed...I can't begin to tell you how wonderful it felt.

I walked home and met my friend's hubby on the way:

'What the FUCK have you done to your hair?' he asked via the rolled down window of his van.

Readers, I SWOOSHED my hair at him.

'I don't care what you think,' I said, poking him viciously in the eye (not really, just inside my head) I LOVE it.'

But as I walked home, my happiness at having a straight and swishing curtain of hair slowly evaporated.

Out of everyone that I bumped into, none of them really liked it.  Oh sure - they said Oh WOW and Oh MY God that is SO different and You Look Totally Different, but no-one said that they loved it as much as me, other than my serious faced little Sonshine.  Yes, bless his little nylon socks - he did love it.

Interestingly enough, he couldn't get his head around the concept of it being straight.  He kept calling me blonde.  For him, blonde hair = straight hair.

Tertarus - for the first time EVER - could run his fingers through it without needing cut free by the fire brigade.  But, as you may have already noticed, there is about as much chance of Tertarus wanting to run his fingers through my hair than there is of, well, me having lovely hair.

I looked at myself in the mirror and decided that although I liked the swooshiness and the straightness, the hours needed to iron it into submission was just too high maintenance for me.  Plus, at the first drop of rain, I transform back into Cinderella, one frizzy, rebellious curl at a time.  Since I live in Scotland, this is and odds-on event.

I then began my flirtation with rollers.

If there's one thing that my hair can do, it's hang onto a curl, and my avatar pic catches THE moment when I realised that I needn't be straight and swooshy, I could be curly and Dita-esque(ish). Sadly, a scant 10 minutes after I snapped myself in the ol' bedroom mirror for my avatar photo, Tartarus thrust a garden fork and a bin bag into my hands and asked me to Do Something in the Garden.  In the rain.

This is when I realised that rain also undid the carefully coiffed curls and established that I just as  quickly frizzed back into Cinderella mode from curls as I did from being straight.

I can't say that I love my hair any more now, but I do accept it for what it is.

When a terrified junior starts to blow dry me, I always tell them not to panic when my barnet frizzes out into a fire hazard, but to plough on manfully (girlfully?) and that the straighteners will make Everything Alright.

Last time I visited Juno, my mother, she showed me her new hairdo.  'I decided to let it dry naturally, the way you do...but when you get older, all the curl drops out of your hair.' she said wistfully.

I perked up.  'So, at 73, there's an outside chance that I might have NATURALLY straight hair?'

Who said that Old Age is to be dreaded?!  Bring it ON!

BTW - a chap called Steve Arnold is looking for pix of bad hair.  Honestly, look here