Essay: Getting the Look

WE’RE ALL JUST ONE HAIRCUT AWAY FROM RESEMBLING OUR MOTHERS

by maggie hathway | photo for illustration by jupiter unlimited

Recently I cut my shoulderlength hair short. And then, because the cut was looking a little too John Kerry and Jimmy Carter – shorter again until my longest hair was an inch and a half. It wasn’t a disaster, except to my husband and son, who found the haircut reminiscent of the short hair I had following chemotherapy a few years ago. Overall, though, it wasn’t a disaster, and I received my share of compliments from obligated friends and family. But it was also not as cute as I had expected.

I had two motives for cutting my hair. One was head lice. (Yes, I am actually admitting that I had head lice. Public confession is an essential part of Live, Love … Lice!, my campaign to take the shame out of this blameless affliction.) Anyway, after weeks of searching every hair on my head for nits, I wanted to have no hair at all, a la Britney. But having been bald once before and knowing the downside of that look, I chose shears over a razor.

I also thought I would look better. As gravity pulls cheeks into jowls and eyelids into eye tarps, it’s time to send something up into the atmosphere, namely, a hairdo. Not only did I think it was the Sixth Rule of Fashion that at some point between the time a woman thinks about buying Frownies and the time she needs to buy Fixodent, hair should be clipped to the ear, I also was sure that shorter hair would make me a veritable paragon of young and hip.

I was wrong.

I was going for Twiggy or Mia Farrow, and fondly remembering a haircut I had in college – a short, shaggy homage to Joan Jet and David Bowie. It escaped my notice that I was no longer a rocker chick, unless the words “off her” preceded the term. My haircut came off as much more Ladies- Who-Lunch.

I could live with Ladies-Who-Lunch, especially after I convinced myself that those ladies were lunching on sushi, wearing black leather, and listening to Björk. I ignored the friend who told me I was the spitting image of Jamie Lee Curtis.

As my spikes have grown softer and flatter, hanging sadly over my ears as if to say, “The jig is up, Maggie,” someone else has emerged in the mirror. Not Twiggy, not Jamie Lee, not young and definitely not hip. I see in my reflection a person I have never looked like before, a person I did not choose to resemble at this time in my life. But there she is, smiling at me in the mirror.My mother.

It’s been a bit of a shock.

Not that my mother isn’t attractive. She was really pretty when she was my age and still is today with her white hair and sparkling eyes. She cut her hair short as soon as she had her first baby and never grew it again. How funny that in trying so hard for a “look,” I’ve ended up looking like someone who never tried to have a “look” at all.My mother’s short hair was just a concession to the demands on her time. It’s a scientific fact that a woman raising 11 children doesn’t need hair that requires fussing.

But here’s the rub: Sporting the Mom Look – sensible, simple and subdued – makes me feel like I’m out of the game. The Mom Look means no one’s looking at all. Nowadays, the only men who check me out at the grocery store are probably wondering if I’ve escaped from the nuthouse or am staggering out of a threeday bender.

If I were looking for the bright side of my new Mom Look – and if I really were my mother, I would certainly do that – I would mention that now I can see my mother, who lives far away, anytime I want. I find myself staring at my reflection for long periods of time, like Harry Potter looking into the Mirror of Erised, the mirror that shows the heart’s deepest desire, and seeing not his own reflection but that of his parents’. So often we don’t know our heart’s deepest desire. Perhaps looking like my mother, a woman who is beautiful inside and out, is the look I’m going for after all.

Maggie Hathway ponders her new look in Beverly Hills.