Bad Hair Days

The worst has happened. I had a haircut gone bad on Thursday of this week and have yet to appear in public since.

Men have no idea the power of the bad hair day. I almost managed to explain it once to my husband. I was in a foul mood because it was raining out and my hair looked like road kill after a storm. He was, to say the least, not sympathetic.

"I don't understand why you place so much value on your hair," he said. "Hair doesn't say anything about your values or who you are as a person. Why does it matter?"

I dropped the brush and comb and turned to glare at him. "Because women are judged much more than men on their appearance, and hair is a big part of that."

"I think you do it to yourself," he said smugly.

I walked a step forward. "So are you telling me," I asked, "that how your hair looks plays absolutely no part in your day."

"Yes, that's right," he said.

"So you don't think people judge you by your hair, and you're not at all affected by what your hair looks like?" I asked again.

"Exactly," he answered.

"Fine," I said. "You're telling me that if I asked you to shave both sides of your head and dye the top bright red, you'd have no problem with it because how your hair looks doesn't matter one little bit to you and doesn't affect at all how you're seen?"

"Um," said my husband.

I raised my eyebrows and looked at him.

"Okay, in that very extreme example, yes, I probably would feel uncomfortable."

"Well that's what women feel like daily," I said. "A bad hair day is like going out in public with a reverse purple mohawk and waiting to see what people think."

We don't talk much about hair anymore.

Still, Thursday's haircut was a bad one. Well, I shouldn't say bad. My hairdresser is very skilled and even though the cut is much too short for my liking, it's still a good cut in that it has some style to it. It's just WAY shorter than I wanted.

Think of Sharon Stone's spikey little haircut and go about 1/2 an inch shorter all the way around and that's what I'm dealing with.

Plus, I don't look like Sharon Stone.

Luckily, I like short hair. I flatter myself that you have to have a certain confidence to pull it off. Short hair, styled right, is very sexy-looking. Again, I think it's because you have to radiate a confidence that says, "I have hair the length of chipmunk fur but I'm still a woman."

And my hair grows fast. Two weeks, and it will probably be at the length I wanted in the first place. So all is not lost.

But that doesn't mean you may not hear, just for a short while, quiet weeping sounds coming from behind the bathroom door.