Hair

"Hair is everything. We wish it wasn’t so we could actually think about something else occasionally. But it is. It’s the difference between a good day and a bad day. We’re meant to think that it’s a symbol of power, that it’s a symbol of fertility. Some people are exploited for it and it pays your fucking bills. Hair is everything.”

This is a short monologue by Phoebe Waller-Bridge in her self-produced show Fleabag. One that has stuck with me as one of the show's many incredibly relatable scenes. It's led me to analyze my relationship with my hair, and how it is used as a cinematographic theme. Let's dive in.

My hair and I

I've got my father's genes to thank for my thick locks. He could've passed for an honorary member of the Bee Gees back in the 1970s. I was blonde as a child and my hair darkened - naturally and later artificially - over time, much to my mother's dismay. Her standard reaction whenever I dyed my hair again was: "I just liked it so much when it was blonde." Reading the subtext would of course reveal that it wasn't about the color at all, but about me not being her sweet little girl anymore. I think that only made it more appealing to me to keep darkening my hair rather than lightening it as time went by. It's like I was signaling my maturity. Maybe even my independence.

Though you may be surprised to hear now that, growing up, I've always told myself that I didn't care much about my hair. It was just there. I wore it in a ponytail or a bun or else it would get in the way, to my incredible annoyance. Why should I put any effort into it looking a certain way if all it did was just continue to grow until I decide to chop it again? But I suppose choosing to not care is a testament to caring in and of itself, though perhaps not in the same way I imagined it with that statement. I may not care to spend heaps of money on expensive treatments, extensions, color or styling, but over the years I've come to realize that the way I treat and regard my hair holds much more meaning than mere superficial vanity. It's not so much about the way it looks, but about what it symbolizes. And to me, that's agency.

It's why, sometimes, I prefer working on my hair myself over going to a salon. I am no stranger to snipping off great lengths of my hair while blasting 2000s pop hits in my bathroom, or even cutting bangs, whenever I get an itch to do so once every few months. Or dyeing it a few shades darker ever so often. Always with semi-permanent dye. I'll leave you to interpret what that says about me. My hair has been down to my bellybutton, up to my jaw, and everything in between. It's been blonde, brown, red, black (that was a weird time), purple, an unintentional orange, then an intentional orange. I don't remember ever being freaked out by the changes in my hair. It's always been a fun site of experimentation for me. A way to explore my style, my identity, my sense of self. And the most important thing is that it is completely in my control.

The power of hair in film

Hair holds memories. Have you ever seen those dramatic movie scenes of women snipping or buzzing their hair off to mark a transition in their life? Think Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl (2014), Shailene Woodley in the Divergent franchise, Florence Pugh in A Good Person (2023). Or, how could I forget, Mulan! I understand those characters. There is nothing quite like feeling that weight fall off of your shoulders. In a literal sense, but mostly metaphorically. It's like you're leaving the perhaps negative experiences you've had recently float to the floor. To me, it feels like closing a chapter. Or more accurately, it feels like opening a new one. In film, this theme can be used to signify many things. Let's go over some of them using some examples.

Florence Pugh in A Good Person

A drastic hair change can signify a breaking point in someone's mental wellbeing. More often than not, it's portrayed as something negative - as a sort of manic episode. Take the hair cutting scene of A Good Person. Florence Pugh's character, Allison, is processing a traumatic event. About a year ago, she was driving a car with her sister-in-law and her sister-in-law's husband, when she took her eyes of the road for a few seconds and ended up causing a crash, killing the two passengers and leaving Allison with critical injuries and an addiction to pain medication. The haircut comes at a dire time; she feels like she's hit her rock bottom, and her hair becomes a symbolic reminder of the traumatic event and the depression that followed it. Nothing else seems to be working and Allison is desperate to change her situation. And in such a case, picking up a pair of scissors can offer at least a quick, temporary fix.

So in this case, hair symbolizes pain. It can also symbolize beauty. From a young age, girls and women are fed this idea that our hair is a source of femininity; an attractive feature that we should be putting care (and money) into. I remember obsessively watching make-over scenes in The Princess Diaries (2001), Clueless (1995),The Devil Wears Prada (2006), or the make-over episodes in America's Next Top Model. There was something satisfying about seeing such a transformation, and the more "beautiful" version of that person that came out on the other end, implying that their life becomes infinitely more fulfilling because of it. A very reductionist view, of course, and also over time shaping a very cookie-cutter idea of what beauty looks like. Long hair, straight, not frizzy, not grey, highlighted and polished. When one of the women on America's Next Top Model was told she would be getting a short haircut, it almost always came with tears, with comments about how she would be losing her womanhood, how she looked like a boy, how she doesn't feel sexy anymore. It cuts into that deep connection that it can hold to a woman's identity.

These ideas are played with in film in a few ways. In Les Misérables (2012), for example. Anne Hathaway's character Fantine, a poor factory worker, is trying to make ends meet to support her daughter. In doing so, she resorts to begging and prostitution, and, eventually, selling not only her possessions but also her hair. It being such a last resort, even after selling her body, shows just how valuable her hair is to her. Losing it is like losing part of herself. For Fantine, this is devastating, especially as it is out of an act of desperation rather than choice. She is powerless in the situation. Many other movies take another approach and frame such an event as an act of resistance against these oppressing beauty standards. For example in Gone Girl, Amy Dunne, played by Rosamund Pike, has felt a pressure to be the "perfect" wife for years since she entered into marriage. Her appearance needed to exude the image of success. In the beginning of the film, her hair is long, sleek, blonde, always looking like she just got it blowdried. Then as she transitions into her new life, she cuts it to up to her collar bones in a rest stop bathroom and dies it a dirty blonde, freeing herself from expectations and her performance as the polished wife. She stops brushing it, puts it back into a headband, and lets go of the care she once put into her physical appearance, as a way to come back to herself as an individual.

It's interesting how something seemingly so mundane can possess so many at times contradictory symbolisms. Powerlessness and power. Care and nonchalance. Holding on and letting go. Standing out and blending in. The bottom line for me is that hair is a site of performance and expression. Whether it is a conscious performance or not, each of us make intentional choices to let our hair speak for us. I don't always know what mine is trying to say. Sometimes I tune it out, sometimes I listen, sometimes I feed it words. There is something beautiful about carrying something with you that has been there consistently for years, even though I still get annoyed when it gets in the way.

I am not my hair

I don't think any song would be a better fit here than India Arie's "I am not my hair". Let it be the soundtrack of your day today.