This story was so interesting. I just wanted to share. I think her problem was that she didn't have a sense of style so her WSL added to her non-social life.
Can a haircut change your life? Liz Jones chopped off her waist-length locks to find out
Last updated at 8:25 PM on 30th November 2008
My last haircut was at the age of five, when I decided to grow out a monkish bob with a heavy fringe.
I quite liked the fringe because it hid my forehead, and the bob because it swung in front of my face, concealing my rather flat, uninteresting profile, and so I decided I needed an even more impenetrable first line of defence.
As I got older, my hair grew with me, a heavy, often greasy, invariably split-ended curtain behind which I could hide. I have never used my long hair to flirt with, coquettishly, to plait, or to put up in elaborate 'dos'.
Enlarge
Enlarge
Longing for change: Liz with her trademark locks (left) and now with her sexy new look
Oh dear me no. It was just a long, heavy, hairy version of a burka, out of which two big dark eyes would peep, nervously, at the world.
Having long hair - by the time I was 12, it reached way past my bottom - became my trademark, my USP. I was always 'the girl with the long hair'.
It was very hard to look after, like a giant, unruly pet. All of my pocket money would go on sachets of pale blue Wella conditioner, and vaguely scientific-looking white bottles of Protein 21, which promised to mend split ends (it didn't; I was reduced to snipping them off, one by one).
I always had to be excused from swimming because my hair wouldn't fit in a floral rubber hat, and I wasn't allowed to drip in the next class.
Sometimes, I would miss my stop on the bus because the person next to me was inadvertently sitting on my hair, and I was too timid to ask them to move.
As a teenager, I would daydream about a boy softly pushing my hair from my face and exclaiming: 'Oh my God, but you're beautiful.'
Of course, no one ever did that. Only relatively recently did I find out that at my local youth club I was known as 'the witch'.
Very young, I developed a phobia of hairdressers - my mum would occasionally encourage me to go 'just for a trim'; I always refused - that I still have.
While I am sure there are lots of women who enjoy sitting in front of a brightly lit mirror being 'pampered', chatting about their holiday plans, letting someone else take charge of their head, I find the whole process tortuous.
My first ever, tentative visit to a hairdresser came when, as a 20-year-old student in London, I discovered Molton Brown in South Molton Street.
This was a pioneering, completely 'natural' salon that didn't use hairdryers, hairspray, rollers or peroxide, but instead only finger drying, 'Molton Browners' (bits of wire covered in foam and fabric, around which the ends of the hair were twisted to produce waves), and vegetable rinses.
Long hair: Not necessarily the feel-good option
I allowed a beautiful Japanese girl called Ingrid with long, black, straight hair that shone like a mirror to trim just one centimetre from my unruly ends. I continued to trust Ingrid, and only Ingrid, until the salon sadly closed down, propelling me into the cruel world of the 'celebrity' hairdresser (by this time I had a job and a salary, as opposed to a student grant, to devote to the upkeep of my hair).
I tried the Long Hair Clinic at Harrods, where a man in a white coat told me my hair had to be all one length, so I spent several years growing out my fringe. I went to Ellis Helen on Walton Street, wanting long curls like those sported by actress Andie MacDowell on the cover of Harpers & Queen.
I went to Keith at Smile. And to Nicky Clarke. I consulted trichologist Philip Kingsley to ensure my hair was in tip-top condition. But I always, always, always emerged - often after a fight, vowing never to return again - with my long centre-parted tresses intact.
Back in the Nineties, I was forced to make twice-weekly visits to Aveda in Marylebone High Street, and later High Holborn to have my grey roots retouched.
My hair became blacker and blacker, coarser and coarser, but still I would not let it go.
'How about something a little softer?' Antoinette at Aveda would beseech me, but I always refused, not meeting her eye in the mirror (I always studiously avoided looking up at my reflection). I honestly think at this point I believed people who wanted me to cut my hair were merely jealous that their's didn't grow this long.
I suppose, too, I was trying to hang on to my youth. Not much in my life had changed since I was 12 - still no man to love me, still no children - and I think in a way my hair reflected that. My hair hadn't moved on because I hadn't, not really.
My life started to revolve around my hair. Because it was so long, it picked up a lot of dirt, so I washed it every day, which meant I would spend £30 a week on conditioner (I have tried every brand known to womankind, graduating from Wella to Aveda, through Kiehl's, Shu Uemura, Philip B and Frederic Fekkai, until finally alighting on the organic products by Louise Galvin for thick, coloured, damaged hair, which make me smell like a meadow) and take hours trying to detangle and dry it.
Having long hair affected the way I dressed, too. Not wanting to look too floaty or girly, I adopted a uniform of Helmut Lang trouser suits teamed with severe white shirts (never blouses).
I even wore a white Helmut Lang trouser suit for my wedding and, looking back at my wedding photos, I can see now that I looked not like Bianca Jagger at all, which was the intention, but like a strange, thin man with long hair; exactly like Alice Cooper, in fact.
So why, you might ask, did I decide to finally, finally, finally have my hair cut? I suppose, partly, it was all tied up (not literally) with getting divorced last October.
Throughout my short marriage, my husband hated my long hair. He never found it remotely sexy; in fact, he found it the opposite.
He was always complaining that it got wound around his fingers, and inveigled its way into his mouth, making him gag, and felt 'like horse's hair'. He said my hair made my face 'too long'; that my image was that of 'an old hag'.
And while I took some of his points on board, I could never have allowed a man to dictate what I did with my hair, and so I grew it even longer, just to annoy him.
Partly, too, I decided I needed to do something different with my hair because I am hurtling towards the age of 50, and although there are a few, exceptional women past that landmark age who still look OK with waist-length tresses - Franca Sozzani, the editor of Italian Vogue, springs to mind - I was coming to the realisation I might be looking a little ridiculous.
I was also beginning to feel bored with always getting up in the morning and looking exactly the same. I was fed up, I suppose, of always being me. And so that is how I found myself, last Wednesday morning, in the Knightsbridge salon of Paul Edmonds, sitting tensely in a chair while he hovered ominously behind me with a sharp pair of scissors.
I had chosen Paul because a friend, Anabel, had recently allowed him to cut her longish blonde hair and he hadn't made her look 'remotely mumsy': my biggest fear.
I had taken along with me the latest glossy magazine ad for Dior, featuring the Italian beauty Monica Bellucci, her long, dark hair having been transformed into a new, sexy, choppy, glamorous length that stopped just beyond her ears.
Can a haircut change your life? Liz Jones chopped off her waist-length locks to find out
Last updated at 8:25 PM on 30th November 2008
My last haircut was at the age of five, when I decided to grow out a monkish bob with a heavy fringe.
I quite liked the fringe because it hid my forehead, and the bob because it swung in front of my face, concealing my rather flat, uninteresting profile, and so I decided I needed an even more impenetrable first line of defence.
As I got older, my hair grew with me, a heavy, often greasy, invariably split-ended curtain behind which I could hide. I have never used my long hair to flirt with, coquettishly, to plait, or to put up in elaborate 'dos'.
Enlarge
Enlarge
Longing for change: Liz with her trademark locks (left) and now with her sexy new look
Oh dear me no. It was just a long, heavy, hairy version of a burka, out of which two big dark eyes would peep, nervously, at the world.
Having long hair - by the time I was 12, it reached way past my bottom - became my trademark, my USP. I was always 'the girl with the long hair'.
It was very hard to look after, like a giant, unruly pet. All of my pocket money would go on sachets of pale blue Wella conditioner, and vaguely scientific-looking white bottles of Protein 21, which promised to mend split ends (it didn't; I was reduced to snipping them off, one by one).
I always had to be excused from swimming because my hair wouldn't fit in a floral rubber hat, and I wasn't allowed to drip in the next class.
Sometimes, I would miss my stop on the bus because the person next to me was inadvertently sitting on my hair, and I was too timid to ask them to move.
As a teenager, I would daydream about a boy softly pushing my hair from my face and exclaiming: 'Oh my God, but you're beautiful.'
Of course, no one ever did that. Only relatively recently did I find out that at my local youth club I was known as 'the witch'.
Very young, I developed a phobia of hairdressers - my mum would occasionally encourage me to go 'just for a trim'; I always refused - that I still have.
While I am sure there are lots of women who enjoy sitting in front of a brightly lit mirror being 'pampered', chatting about their holiday plans, letting someone else take charge of their head, I find the whole process tortuous.
My first ever, tentative visit to a hairdresser came when, as a 20-year-old student in London, I discovered Molton Brown in South Molton Street.
This was a pioneering, completely 'natural' salon that didn't use hairdryers, hairspray, rollers or peroxide, but instead only finger drying, 'Molton Browners' (bits of wire covered in foam and fabric, around which the ends of the hair were twisted to produce waves), and vegetable rinses.
Long hair: Not necessarily the feel-good option
I allowed a beautiful Japanese girl called Ingrid with long, black, straight hair that shone like a mirror to trim just one centimetre from my unruly ends. I continued to trust Ingrid, and only Ingrid, until the salon sadly closed down, propelling me into the cruel world of the 'celebrity' hairdresser (by this time I had a job and a salary, as opposed to a student grant, to devote to the upkeep of my hair).
I tried the Long Hair Clinic at Harrods, where a man in a white coat told me my hair had to be all one length, so I spent several years growing out my fringe. I went to Ellis Helen on Walton Street, wanting long curls like those sported by actress Andie MacDowell on the cover of Harpers & Queen.
I went to Keith at Smile. And to Nicky Clarke. I consulted trichologist Philip Kingsley to ensure my hair was in tip-top condition. But I always, always, always emerged - often after a fight, vowing never to return again - with my long centre-parted tresses intact.
Back in the Nineties, I was forced to make twice-weekly visits to Aveda in Marylebone High Street, and later High Holborn to have my grey roots retouched.
My hair became blacker and blacker, coarser and coarser, but still I would not let it go.
'How about something a little softer?' Antoinette at Aveda would beseech me, but I always refused, not meeting her eye in the mirror (I always studiously avoided looking up at my reflection). I honestly think at this point I believed people who wanted me to cut my hair were merely jealous that their's didn't grow this long.
I suppose, too, I was trying to hang on to my youth. Not much in my life had changed since I was 12 - still no man to love me, still no children - and I think in a way my hair reflected that. My hair hadn't moved on because I hadn't, not really.
My life started to revolve around my hair. Because it was so long, it picked up a lot of dirt, so I washed it every day, which meant I would spend £30 a week on conditioner (I have tried every brand known to womankind, graduating from Wella to Aveda, through Kiehl's, Shu Uemura, Philip B and Frederic Fekkai, until finally alighting on the organic products by Louise Galvin for thick, coloured, damaged hair, which make me smell like a meadow) and take hours trying to detangle and dry it.
Having long hair affected the way I dressed, too. Not wanting to look too floaty or girly, I adopted a uniform of Helmut Lang trouser suits teamed with severe white shirts (never blouses).
I even wore a white Helmut Lang trouser suit for my wedding and, looking back at my wedding photos, I can see now that I looked not like Bianca Jagger at all, which was the intention, but like a strange, thin man with long hair; exactly like Alice Cooper, in fact.
So why, you might ask, did I decide to finally, finally, finally have my hair cut? I suppose, partly, it was all tied up (not literally) with getting divorced last October.
Throughout my short marriage, my husband hated my long hair. He never found it remotely sexy; in fact, he found it the opposite.
He was always complaining that it got wound around his fingers, and inveigled its way into his mouth, making him gag, and felt 'like horse's hair'. He said my hair made my face 'too long'; that my image was that of 'an old hag'.
And while I took some of his points on board, I could never have allowed a man to dictate what I did with my hair, and so I grew it even longer, just to annoy him.
Partly, too, I decided I needed to do something different with my hair because I am hurtling towards the age of 50, and although there are a few, exceptional women past that landmark age who still look OK with waist-length tresses - Franca Sozzani, the editor of Italian Vogue, springs to mind - I was coming to the realisation I might be looking a little ridiculous.
I was also beginning to feel bored with always getting up in the morning and looking exactly the same. I was fed up, I suppose, of always being me. And so that is how I found myself, last Wednesday morning, in the Knightsbridge salon of Paul Edmonds, sitting tensely in a chair while he hovered ominously behind me with a sharp pair of scissors.
I had chosen Paul because a friend, Anabel, had recently allowed him to cut her longish blonde hair and he hadn't made her look 'remotely mumsy': my biggest fear.
I had taken along with me the latest glossy magazine ad for Dior, featuring the Italian beauty Monica Bellucci, her long, dark hair having been transformed into a new, sexy, choppy, glamorous length that stopped just beyond her ears.
.
