photo by Di Mackey

Growing up in the 70s, I longed to have a long dark shimmering sheet of hair like Cher, Katharine Ross, or Ali McGraw. My mother had my naturally curly auburn hair cut short with wonky little girl bangs. My mother’s friends and my older relatives all admired my hair, and my mom would reply with barely concealed pride, “The more you cut it, the more it curls.”

But I didn’t like having short, curly hair. I envied my straight-haired friends with their colored hair clips and pearly plastic ponytail beads and sleek head bands. My hair could not be accessorized! It wasn't in style, and I felt plagued by its unpredictable curves and angles. When I was about 12, I started growing my hair out, determined to part it in the middle and have it cover my back with awesome, silky sleekness. To expedite the process, I rarely, if ever had my hair cut.

The weight of my long thick hair relaxed the curls into waves. I was clueless about styling products and tools and had no idea how to manage my hair. One of my big mistakes was blow-drying and brushing it, which is a big no-no for curly girls. The brushing combined with Virginia’s humidity meant that more often than not I looked more like Gilda Radner’s  SNL character Rosanne Rosanna Rosannadanna than Cher, but at least my hair was long, which was the measuring stick of success in my teens.

When I was 20, I had my first professional hair cut and never had waist-length hair again. I experimented with a lot of styles, and looking back I have to say my long hair days were not my best. Eventually I learned how to work with my curls, not against them, and even started to occasionally use mousse or gel to calm the frizz and define its shape though my dislike of styling products lingers to this day.

My early love affair with long, straight hair and my reluctance to get my hair cut all came back to me this week because E-Grrrl has become obsessed with the length of her hair. She has baby fine, bone-straight silky blonde hair that we’ve always kept cut between chin and shoulder length. At that length, it has a beautiful shape and a sharp, neat edge that swings when she moves. Longer than that, and the ends start breaking, the volume disappears, and her hair becomes limp and lank, which is where we’ve been lately.

E-Grrrl seldom gets the brush all the way through her hair and it has a tendency to look unkempt and stringy. In the last few weeks, I’ve been telling her over and over that she’s overdue for a haircut but she’s been side-stepping the issue. Lately her hair has been so flat and listless that even her father has been nagging her to do something with it.

So today we ganged up on her and got her to the hairdresser’s. She only wanted a teeny, tiny trim, though I managed to convince her to go for at least an inch off. The stylist gave her hair a nice sharp edge, but even as I watched him work, I knew E-Grrrl remained unconvinced it was a huge improvement. Her mind is set on super long, straight hair and she resented every snippet that hit the floor. Just as my mother couldn’t get me to appreciate my curls when I was 9, I’m powerless to persuade my daughter that her baby fine tresses look best cut above her shoulders. What goes around, comes around.