How are you doing in the hair department? Desperate? Resigned? Taking action? One friend was warned by her hairdresser not to go near a pair of scissors, maybe think about wearing a hat. And I understand that hair dyes are now almost impossible to find on local shelves.
Evidently they were still available last month in Portland, Oregon, where my son and his family live. Fifteen-year-old George, contending with pandemic confinement, decided that he wanted to change his dark hair for something blonder. “It was always something that I considered doing,” he says, “but never pulled the trigger. I figured if I was ever to do it, it should be now.”
If hair dyes make it back onto the shelves or online sites, this could easily become a national pastime. What color are you sporting this week? Purple? Green? Maybe we’ll see Zoom-based hair-dying sessions along with all those yoga classes.
Out in California, one elegant friend had an illicit rendezvous with her coiffeur. Inside the closed salon, he mixed up the color she usually uses, then met her in her car outside, carrying the dye in a brown paper bag, with instructions for use. Voilà, she is herself again.
Here at my house, we are remaining boringly gray, but I have defied the non-cutting mandate. Cutting hair was something I did — my own and others’ — for years in the early days of marriage and parenthood. And since we are a family with relatively curly hair, the results of smaller mistakes do not have to be disastrous.
Photos of our boys from that era, however, show that I was not slated for awards as a beautician. Even so, think of the money we saved.
Meanwhile, this is one of the necessities, one of the regular services that I am missing at the moment. Having my hair cut regularly is not merely about civilizing my hair. It is also something of a spa treatment, a luxurious pleasure. I love leaning back over the sink and having Dana Mergendahl of Absolutely Hair in Amherst give me what amounts to a head massage.
The results of her cutting are invariably expert, lasting for weeks, whereas my own efforts require almost daily corrections, an outbreak of something sticking out over my left ear or atop my head. But aside from my personal loss, I also feel terrible about the drying up of income for that business, those businesses, which are, for me and many others, essential.
What qualifies as essential for many of us is not necessarily the same as the government’s definition. Yes, of course, food, drink, medication need to be available, as do the indefatigable delivery services of the post office (now threatened by our president), and other mobile providers. But what is essential for the general good leaves out a lot that is essential for me.
I need a newspaper, a bookstore, a stationery store, a copy shop, and yes, a hairdresser. I need access to a library. I want to be able to take excess items to the Fisher Home’s Hospice Shop. And now and then I want to be able to go into a clothing store, browse, and sometimes buy.
We know that hair has had many powerful meanings over time. The long, unruly locks of 1960s youth were both an annoyance to parents and an emblem of liberation. Naturally, one of the first things the military did with these young people when they were drafted was to give them a buzz cut. And of course, one form of humiliating people has often been to shave their heads.
But staying mostly out of sight, except on computerized meet-ups, has changed the way many of us approach our appearance. One internet site seethes with photos of heads that have been disastrously clipped.
A friend in Manhattan, seriously confined to an apartment, has continued to cut her own hair periodically. The most recent result, she says, is not great, “But hey,” she says cheerfully, “no one is looking at me except my husband and he remains fond.” Lucky them.
Marietta Pritchard, a former Gazette features editor, is keeping her distance in Amherst.