Talking Heads

I have been trying to figure out what to do about my hair. For months—okay years!—I have simply let it grow. I do not dye or cut it. Most days I brush it and pull it back sloppily with a plastic claw; some days I actually braid it; other days, I must confess, I am a veritable Medusa, the way I let it twist and snarl and coil unattended down my back. Hair is a political statement and sometimes I consider that my hair is talking back to Daniela’s hair—which she submits to the parruchiere as often as three times a week for fine-tune trims and tints and teases. Her hair is never quite right: too orange, too red, too black, too square, too puffy, too in the face, too brushed back, too last year, too nineties, too old, too come una ragazza—young. My hair remains simply, blessedly, inarguably wrong.

I am not adverse to change, to upgrading my appearance and have been reading heads like a physiognomist as I encounter them on the bus, the train, per strada with hopes of discovering which if any Italian style would ever suit me. I am too fat and too long-faced for the fashionable shorn look I most admire—the scalp practically shaved with almost a tonsure of bang…big earrings, cherry-red framed glasses, lots of lipstick (you laugh to imagine me so!). Politically this look would work: androgynous, low-maintenance, even lower maintenance than the mess I now don’t maintain—easy to dress up or dress down, funky one minute suave the next, and I wouldn’t be able to hide behind hair like a human Cousin Itt, but would be right out there, exposed. Revelation is everything or almost everything. Vanity still has something to say, however, and I really don’t want to be exposed as a pin head.

My daughter recommended the Devil-Wears-Prada look of Meryl Streep. After all, that’s almost how old I am, even if I don’t want to admit it; grown-up women do and should look, well, grown up with the hair whisked up to one side and lacquered with spray, a precision cut—a place for every hair and every hair in its place (I laugh to imagine me so!), the kind of hairstyle that requires an entire make-over to complement it: the complete line of Loreal make-up and body unguents, Prada, Gucci everything—you won’t find Meryl hurtling through Umbria in a hoodie-sweat shirt and Tevas. But dai, Margaret…really, what are you thinking? Wasn’t the movie, in fact, a political indictment of the hair, the first purchase in a lifetime of conspicuous consumption, the selling of the soul, to…well, yes, the film is aptly named.

I believe I encountered an appropriate compromise on the bus this morning, one Margaret might even approve. I never saw her face, because she was standing in front of me and would not turn around, but she clearly could have stepped off 5th Avenue. She flaunted the full length mink many Italian women are known to parade around in—hers glistening golds, browns and oranges from neck almost to ankle, drapey, cape-like, at least 200 animals worth of fur. One could never guess the girth of the body under the tent, but presumably thin if the tiny booted feet—spike heels, spike toes—were any indication. The orange-y brown of the boots brought out highlights in the fur and also coordinated with the scarf the woman wore—shot through with gold thread, expertly knotted around her neck--definitely a put-together woman. But the hair—she hadn’t brushed it! She hadn’t run a comb through it a single time! It stood on end! Standing not far behind her for an entire giro of the city, I could even study the disarray: not even three inches long, and there were rats’ nests and funny parts forking every which way. If she had not been in the mink one might have taken her for someone recently released from a straight-jacket, someone who'd been thrashing around all night and now was too numbed-up on thorazine to even see what had become of her. For a moment, she seemed such a contradiction, but then I got it! It was high-fashion, high-maintenance bed head. She’d probably paid her parruchiere 100 euro to achieve that look.

And to think what I achieve at no cost on my own quite naturally.

I have a whole lot more listening to do before I come to any conclusions about hair and hairstyles. Until these dos start making sense, I'll let mine hang fire.