A few weeks before my 30th birthday, my beloved stepfather declared that the time had come, most definitely, for me to cut my long hair once and for all. He was really rather insistent.
People feel strongly about many things, from climate change to mashed avocado on toast but, boy, can we add long hair on older women to that list.
My stepfather feels that 30 is the cut-off point, literally. Some might be more generous and push that up to 35 or 40. Fifty, though, is obviously beyond the pale. Long hair on any woman of 50 or above – I’m now 53 – is straying into dangerous and forbidden territory.
Certainly, few of my friends have long hair, but at my children’s secondary school not one girl has short hair. Today’s teens sashay about in their high-waisted jeans swishing their thick, glossy hair for all the world as if they were in a L’Oreal ad.
And quite right, too. They look fabulous. But such swishing and flicking should not be the preserve of those women with no-airbrush-required complexions.
Candida Crewe, 53, has always had long hair and calls it her ‘security blanket’. After receiving a treatment at Hair by Dar, in London, her locks looked healthy again (pictured after the treatment)
At long last, it feels as though attitudes are beginning to change. At Hair by Dar, a salon near Buckingham Palace, eponymous owner Dar Barot is championing long hair and not just on younger clients.
He sees no reason why women of a certain age should have to limit themselves to sensible and supposedly age-appropriate styles and he has developed a special, volumising cut to this end.
Dar’s mission is to make long hair look fabulous on older women, too, and he has worked his magic on no less than Hollywood star Goldie Hawn, who is not only perenially fabulous, she’s also pushing 72.
The tide is changing and not before time, but we still have a way to go. Mary Beard, 62, is a distinguished classicist at Cambridge and a TV presenter. Nevertheless, the trolls are out for her and her hair. Why? And how is this credible in 2017?
The fact is that long, grey hair – or long hair that is not remotely grey but which emerges from the head of a woman who happens to be in possession of a few wrinkles and a middle-aged spread – has long spelled homeless, mad, scary or witch.
Even at best, the benign blue-stocking spinster with a purple cardigan, a brace of cats and a grey bun, which she lets down only in the privacy of her own flat and in the dead of night, is thought of not as distinguished, but as odd, eccentric, not quite one of us.
There are those among us who never did take their stepfather’s (or father’s, brothers’, aunts’, sisters’, whoever’s) advice – not at 30, 40, 50 or beyond. Who have never owned a cat or a broomstick, and to whom folk are not outwardly insulting.
Yet it is incredible just how many times we are asked the passive-aggressive question: ‘Have you ever thought of cutting your hair?’ Or how often we are told: ‘I think your hair would look really nice short.’
She says she often receives passive-aggressive questions about whether she’s ever thought about cutting her hair. Candida is pictured here before the salon treatment
Do these people – women as well as men – feel threatened in some way? Probe a little further, and it turns out many of the women wish they themselves could have longer hair, but find it doesn’t look its best once it grows past a bob.
So it’s wistfulness, maybe, on their part?
One foxy middle-aged woman I know has fantastic thick, shiny dark brown hair and it looks better than it did in her teens when she went in for some seriously dodgy Eighties cuts and perms.
It makes her look 20 years younger than she is. She says: ‘It’s obvious. As long as it’s not full of dandruff and hanging in greasy strands, everyone knows long hair is far more attractive and sexy than short!’ Another friend, 55, has beautiful blonde hair down to her posterior – and a lover aged 32. She remains convinced that the two facts are not unrelated.
‘Our mothers and grandmothers didn’t have long hair when they were our age,’ she says. ‘But nor did they wear fitness gear or go to festivals with their teenage children.’
I’ve had long hair ever since I emerged from babyhood and it began to grow (white blonde in those days). My mother took me for the odd trim, nothing more, at the glamorous salon she frequented in Knightsbridge, West London.
After having her locks treated with a special conditioning cream and trimmed, Candida (pictured after salon visit) is convinced the length has got a good many years in it yet
Once, when I was four years old, a naughty friend cut it off with blunt nursery scissors when we were playing hairdressers.
At 14, on some stupid whim, I had it cut to just below my ears. I have never felt so naked, ugly or exposed and certainly never made that mistake again.
I don’t go to a hairdresser now. They always want to get their hands on it, to cut it drastically after their own fashion, which is never mine. Also, I can’t be doing with the faff and the expense.
My long hair, by sheer chance, does not contain a single grey strand, so it doesn’t need dyeing. I don’t cut it – it has reached a length where is has stopped growing. I simply wash it two or three times a week and leave it.
I accept, it is thinner than it once was. Recently, I had been beginning to think it was looking a bit rats- tailey and, yes, edging towards witchy.
Which may be why I accepted the salon session with Dar.
‘I am not like younger hairdressers wishing to make their mark with their cutting,’ says Dar, who has been in the business for more than 30 years. ‘You can trust me. My point is to keep it long, but looking its very best.’
I want to show women they can keep their hair long and make it look wonderful. The cut makes the face and neckline incredibly sexy and beautiful, as well as younger and fresher
And that’s a fair point. Its actual best was about 30 to 40 years ago, and these days it could do with a little helping hand – or, to be precise, Dar’s expertise and his tiny device: a hair-cutting razor that looked like fine nail cutters, specially designed cleverly to cut strands without my really noticing it.
And I am neurotic about it.
My long hair has always been – and will remain – my security blanket; my identity, a bit like other people cleave to their nation, town or family name.
Thank God, Dar appeared to effortlessly work his skill on it.
First, he sat me in front of the mirror to go through it with his hands to assess its potential. His assistant washed it and treated it with a special conditioning cream. This sank into it deeply beneath a shower cap and an overhead steamer for 15 minutes before being rinsed off. And then Dar set to work.
While still wet, my hair looked thin and wispy after he had brushed it.
He sat opposite me and asked me to look down.
I felt anxious as he took his trademark little cutters to the front of my mane.
Seemingly, quite a lot was hitting the floor, but compared with previous hairdressers, he was restrained, nothing to overly trouble a person armed with a dustpan and brush.
Then it was blow-dried and curled a bit and ended up, after an hour or so, looking fuller than it had for a long time. Dar had made it look healthy again.
‘I want to show women they can keep their hair long and make it look wonderful,’ he explained. ‘The cut makes the face, neckline and upper torso incredibly sexy and beautiful, as well as younger and fresher. I use a new technique, created for women with long hair, cutting a V-shaped layer in order to keep the length and achieve body and volume, instead of struggling with flat, dull hair.’
Well, I, for one, am thrilled.
Following this treatment, I am convinced the length has got a good many years in it yet, and I hope it will no longer receive looks that question whether I might be concealing a cauldron in the kitchen.
Or indeed invite suggestions that I knuckle down to ageing gracefully with a prissy bob.
No need now. No thanks. We have every right to be embracing and swishing our middle years’ locks with all the aplomb of those relishing and flicking their adolescent ones.