One Man’s Haircut Hell
I’m a man, in his fifties, who has enjoyed many varied hair styles in my life. Some good, some bad and a few that were downright ugly.
Our hair is supposed to be our crowning glory. Someone once said “Life is an endless struggle, full of frustrations and challenges, but eventually you find a hair stylist you like.”
My adventure with hair began back in the glam rock days of the 1970’s. I was into what was called ‘heavy’ music. Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Uriah Heep were amongst my favourite bands. If you were into this style of music the hair-style of choice was long. You simply let your hair grow in any which way it chose. Male grooming was something that was done to horses and skin care products were definitely for girls.
My hair, being thick and curly, chose to grow every which way.My head resembled an exploded mattress with the stuffing coming out. These days I can’t bear to look at any photos of myself from that era as they just make me cringe.
Along came punk rock and the fashion for shorter, spikey hair and my life was transformed. I had my hair chopped short and would regularly dye it with whatever came to hand. Food colouring was one of my favourite dyes. I liked it because it would wash out easily but this had its disadvantages as getting caught in the rain meant that I soon had coloured streaks running down my face and back.
My hair dying shenanigans evolved into routine use of henna to condition my hair and give it that shiny, deep red colour. Applying henna was no simple task. I would make up the henna mixture using a couple of tea-bags, as a friend had said this would help deepen the dye. I’d then sit with the drying mud-like mixture on my head, covered in a polythene bag, for up to 2 hours. The result was a deep red, teak like colour that looked fantastic in the sunlight.
I was still wearing my hair in short, spikey punk like styles often held in place with glue or soap. I then moved into a phase where I would shave the sides leaving a broad, Mohican like mop of deep red spikes running from my forehead to the base of my neck.
You may recall the band King from the 1980s whose hair-style choices I, sadly, tried to emulate. They wore their hair in long mullets with the sides cropped really short but the back really long. This was an embarrassing direction that my hairstyle took but, luckily, it didn’t last and I soon returned to a short crop. One good thing that came out of this time was that I began to look after myself, leading a healthy lifestyle and even using a little moisturiser from time to time. I even got into using cleansers and toners in a vane attempt to hold back the wrinkles.
I then went completely retro, finding a barber who could give me a very passable flat-top. These were my rockabilly days so my modest flat top soon evolved into a super-monster quiff, held in place with liberal quantities of Black and White hair wax. I love my quiff.
Hop forward to today. I’m now left with two tufts of hair growing from either side of my head and a patch at the back. The rest of my head is bald and I look back on those days when I had a full head of hair with much fondness, except for the mullets.
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