Margaret Atwood Hair

I seem to be careening in the direction of Margaret Atwood hair. To be fair, also Albert Einstein hair. Which is fuzzy, fly-away, untrammelled, un-svelte, dandelion fluff, milkweed, corona, unkempt, unkeepable, craft material, fibrous, floating, burgeoning, expanding, different every day, good at the front but bad at the back and from the sides, bad everywhere... maybe if I put it behind my ears.

She should just do something about her hair. I don't mean Margaret Atwood in particular. I just mean any woman with Margaret Atwood hair. Einstein, I guess, since he was a man, got to have this type of hair. No one said, "He should do something about his hair." It was almost part of his charisma, that wild hair.

You never see a shampoo or conditioner promising to give you fluffy, electrically charged, wild unruliness. No. They offer sleekness and silkiness.

Well, that's all very well if you start out in the sleek-and-silky department. What if you start out with this other hair condition?

Hair products for people with curly or coily textured hair (yes, there is such a distinction) offer one thing: control.

I have a dear friend with whom I used to practise law. At lunch, after a morning of enduring the slings and arrows of family law, we would cheer ourselves up with complaining and joking. We used to imagine a perfect life. It would usually involve our having long, thick, straight hair, which we could swish about when making a point. (She's got the curly hair, too.)

She also imagined a perfect gentleman who would ask her out to the opera and invite her out to dinner first and it would be his idea.

That last is the real killer. The impossible. That it would be his idea.

Because every woman knows that, in real life, it all takes a little wrangling.

So, back to the hair. I have worn my hair short since time immemorial because—not that it is fabulous short—it is simply better short than otherwise. But now I am trying otherwise. I don't exactly know where "otherwise" is going. I don't exactly have "a look" in mind. But I am tired of the tidy short hair. My hair wants to flex its muscle. Well, maybe I want to flex my hair's muscle. I wonder if I could actually have hair power. The kind of hair that makes people's heads jerk back in wonder when you enter the room. Wouldn't that be something? Hair power.

I am afraid to go to the hairdresser. He will know that mine is the kind of hair you want less of, not more. He won't even have to say anything. He'll wait for me to say it and then agree. And yet, if I pursue this dream, he will be the one to help me avoid the dreaded "triangle" look.

People with good hair would not know a thing about this longing, this sad little hope, for a better lot in life in the hair department. They probably just take it for granted that their hair can gleam and shine and that they can fling it about for emphasis.

I am not saying that Margaret Atwood has bad hair. I am saying that she has a certain kind of hair. It is not the popular kind of hair. By the way, this is not libel. If it is the truth, it cannot be libel.

Here's another thing. I understand that some people—say, famous celebrities like Dolly Parton—with wonderful, powerful hair are actually wearing a wig. Well, I don't mind wearing shoes and socks, but I draw the line at wearing a wig. When you take off your shoes and socks, there is your lovely foot, but when you take off a wig, there is your poor, clamped-down, ruined, thin, wretched hair on full display. No way out of that moment, when the truth comes out. That's my thinking on wigs.

Meantime, I sit here, thinking and assessing, while my hair is growing at a rate of 1.25 cm per month (or 0.04 cm a day), extruding in a curling direction. I can't exactly feel it growing, but it definitely feels alive, which I guess it is not. At least the follicle must be alive, so what I feel must be the hair holder.

If I put this much thought into the garden, I would have had it weeded by now.

It is so much more fun to go down the rabbit hole.

On my gravestone: She was nice, she was smart, she was funny. But her hair.