Shaving It All Off

This may come as a shock to you, but I'm fantasizing about shaving it all off.

I have these fantasies from time to time, when I'm tired of all the trimming and styling. When it drives me crazy that - even after fluffing and adding product and putting clips in it - nine times out of ten it still looks messy. I just think it would be easier to be bald.

This current fantasy about shaving my head (yes my head, what did you think I meant?) has been coming on for a while. And it's luring me in with the promise of tangle-free mornings; of days without frizz; of evenings without my shiny head of cascading curls mutating into a dreadlocked mess of chunky knots.

On days like today, on a Bad Hair Afternoon, in a Bad Hair Week, at the end of a Bad Hair Month, I understand what Britney went through on that fateful day in the salon. I wonder if her 'bizarre' head-shaving may have had less to do with a drug-fuelled breakdown, and more to do with being tired of scraggly, overly bleached, impossible-to-comb long hair. (Okay, so maybe the drug-fuelled breakdown had something to do with it, but I'm sure it was the scraggly hair that was the clincher.)

Most women know Bad Hair Days. We all have times when we long for our hair to be different, whether thicker, finer, straighter, more curly, flatter, or more bouffant. But surely it's not just women who feel frustrated with their coiffs? Surely men feel the angst too? Not all, of course; after all, my husband doesn't seem to worry about styling - the fact that he has still has some hair at all is a source of delight to him. But perhaps men like Vin Diesel and Bruce Willis are bald not out of genetics but choice, having rejected a lifetime of knots and split ends in favour of a shiny, easy-to-maintain pate?

As a young woman, I was full of Hair Hope. I was sure that if I just kept searching, I would find the right product, the right hairdresser, the right style, and the right hairdrier to make my hair perfect. My hair would fall, magnificently, in beautifully defined ringlets, with just the right amount of body on the top, and just the right number of tendrils gently grazing my face below.

Now, as a more, er, mature person, I have come to accept reality. Which is that my perfect hair is never going to happen. The best I'm going to get is a nice cut and blowdry every so often (interspersed with some really crappy ones), creating a look I will only be able to replicate on rare occasions by complete fluke, and never on a day I actually have plans.

So for now, it's fantasies about shaving, which I shall harbour until my hairdressing appointment on Friday. And I'm really going to have a radical change this time. I might even let my hairdresser cut a whole three centimetres off.

What, you think I want to be bald???