ABOUT FACE:Haven't been to the hair salon in more than a decade? Rosita Bolandknows your pain
The first time I mentioned in passing that it had been 12 years since I'd been to a hairdresser - but that I now had an appointment for that very week - I was a little taken aback at the reaction. My friend instantly morphed into a version of Munch's The Scream. Hands clapped up to her face. Disbelief. Amazement. More than a fleeting expression of horror. The second time, I was a bit more prepared, but the reaction was identical. The third time, my colleague looked at me open-mouthed and simply said, "God, you should write about it."
Apparently it is a very big deal for a woman not to have crossed the threshold of a salon in more than a decade. Even men, it appears, go to the barbers a lot more regularly than every 12 years. How had I managed all those years, friends asked. Why hadn't I gone? Did I cut my hair myself? Did I have a friend who did it for me? Did I not know that most women go to the hairdressers every six weeks/two months/three months? And how had I managed to look reasonably presentable for all those years? - "You'd never know," was a frequent comment.
In my fantasies, my hair is sleek, straight and black, cut into a chic, sharp 1920s-style bob. In reality, I have wildish curly red hair. On the scale of life's disappointments, it's right down there at the bottom, along with the realisation that dawned when I was about 12 that I was never going to be a ballet dancer.
From time to time over the past several years, I have considered chopping it all off. Two things have always stopped me. One, fear. Better the hair devil you know you'll see looking back at you in the mirror every day than the one you don't. Two, I have amassed a fine collection of sparkly clips and slides I'm quite fond of, which would be redundant with short hair.
I'm no more or less vain that any other woman, so I have no idea really why my last visit to the hairdresser was in 1996, when I lived in Galway. Oh yes, it's coming back to me now. The cost. Twelve years ago, I was broke, and occasional visits to Yourells in Eyre Street ate a hefty chunk out of my wallet each time. I figured I'd rather spend my money on more tangible things, so my visits to Charlie Byrne's bookshop increased and those to Yourells stopped.
Weirdly, my hair doesn't grow much. It's so curly it seems to go round and round in spirals rather than heading ever downwards like Rapunzel. Thus, my hair has hovered around my shoulders at more or less the same length for the past decade plus. So if it didn't need cutting, that's another reason not to go to a salon. What about taking care of damaged ends? Hmmm. Well, more about them anon.
I did, however, go out every few months and buy a block of auburn henna from Lush. To be brief, putting henna in one's own hair at home is work, and it's a mighty messy process. Whenever I was washing it out in the shower and red started exploding everywhere in auburn-coloured mini geysers, I always thought of the famous scene from Hitchcock's Psycho. I admit that every time I did it, I vowed it would be the last. Which finally might be true.
So what made me decide to go through the doors of a salon after 12 years? America. I'm off to live in Boston until next summer, and even I know that American women get their hair done more than once a decade. And while my Irish comrades don't seem to have noticed I've been doing my hair myself for years, I bet their American counterparts would notice within five minutes. Not that it bothers me much. It just seemed like the right time to step out of the Psychoshower and into a salon and let someone else put the henna in for me. Or colouring. Or whatever they call it.
I asked three friends to recommend a Dublin salon to me. Predictably, each recommended a different one.
In the end, I chose Cowboys and Angels, for the simple reason that I walked past it and liked the look of the dramatic red wallpaper, the gold-painted ceiling and the two bright chandeliers. If they could make a good job of how the place looked, I reckoned they could do a good job of how I looked.
To the credit of stylist Joan Redmondedit, she did not come over all faint when I explained myself (my friends had counselled me not to do this, but I disobeyed), although she did say she found it "quite weird" that my hair wasn't longer, considering. She explained that because it was fine, the ends were brittle and had snapped off, so the hair couldn't take the weight of growth. I always thought hair grew out from your scalp, but it seems what happens at the end of your hair is as vital to growth as what happens in your scalp.
Joan did not chop off all my hair, or even very much of it. Just enough to get rid of the "distressed" bits. Neither did she try to persuade me to let her loose on it with the scissors and her imagination, which I had secretly feared. She did exactly what I asked, and the colour ended up on my hair with no effort at all from me, and no need to think of Hitchcock.
I now completely understand why finding a salon you both like and trust is the reason you will never get the same recommendation from more than one person if you ask three of them. It's all about loyalty to the stylist. Already, I can never imagine trusting anyone else other than Joan to do my hair. There's just the small problem of realising she will be 3,000 miles away from me for the next year, and that I think I have finally left my home-grooming days behind me. Put it this way, I'll definitely be back to a salon again before 2020.