We all yearn for change but are we really going to get the new look we asked for, asks Quentin Fottrell
THE BARBER of Kildare Street has given us a haircut, but we're still not sure if it is the one we really asked for. We all yearn for change, and barbers and hairdressers are masters of that.
When we ask for highlights or lowlights, they know that is a metaphor for our life. Haircuts are very personal things: when we see the soft baby hair of our youth wafting to the floor, a little part of us dies softly. We wanted it all off, we couldn't stand it anymore, but we look back at old photo albums and feel the sharp pang of nostalgia when we see how we used to look when we were younger, more naïve, tried to keep our head down and put up with a lot more.
But we were still happy back then . . . weren't we?
Hairdressers know we crave so much more than a haircut when we sit in their chair and, as with the weather-beaten old broad in Educating Rita, who famously pointed to a picture of Princess Diana in a magazine and said, "I want to look like that!", they are paid not to judge.
They are paid to snip, listen and nod in sympathy to our troubles, gripe about our jobs, politics and the state of the country. We didn't like our old fringe. It got to where we couldn't see things clearly through it anymore. We had too much dandruff we couldn't quite explain. Every time we thought that we'd cured it, it was back again, embarrassing us in public. As much as we washed it, our hair was still greasy.
Like us, Hong Kong has had one hell of a home perm. During the last Japanese invasion, it lost half its population. It has its own Independent Commission Against Corruption. But it too persevered and became a financial centre.
A hairdresser there once told me that he needs to have a poker face in his job. If his comb catches on a client's plastic surgery scars, and their eyes meet in the mirror, his expression must remain blank, and belie no sudden flash of recognition.
Similarly, if you're a man of a certain age with thinning hair, a good barber won't hold up the mirror to the back of your head to crudely expose your own slowly encroaching mortality. It's not denial. It's good manners, that's all.
As it finds the confidence to colour its own greyness, Hungary reminds me of Ireland, 20 years ago, only with more exciting hair colours.
Haircuts are more than an artificial way of trying to stir some deeper, more meaningful change; they can also be a valuable form of self-expression. In Budapest some years ago, I passed a chemist that had a dusty pyramid of hair dyes from floor to ceiling in the window. My own shallow western theory about the bright orange and red hues Hungarian women wear with such aplomb is that it is a hangover from communist rule when there was less choice or resources to express individuality through fashion.
Whatever the reason, I liked their chutzpah.
On the opposite end of the scale, when Margaret Thatcher rode in a British army tank with a headscarf during the Falklands War, her regally lacquered bouffant was unwavering. Punk rock's threatening Mohawks were sharp-edged weapons. In her iconic self-portrait as Thatcher, new wave designer Vivienne Westwood fused the two. Westwood hated her politics, yet affirmed Thatcher's street cred.
If Thatcher had changed her hairstyle, she would have been ridiculed for being weak, self-conscious or insecure, which is why Hillary Clinton sticks with her immovable Princess Diana do and maybe why Barack Obama remains afro-less.
America is not ready for a president that black.
Some haircuts start out as conformist, but only later embody social change. The crew cut was worn by the Yale rowing crew. Hence, the name.
Then it was co-opted by the American armed forces (See Elvis entering the army during the Korean War when a soft-skinned Delilah shaved his hair). It became fashionable in the 1950s for men, only to briefly re-emerge for women in the early eighties. I remember my mother arriving home one day with a daring crew cut. We all gasped and wondered if the dinner would still be on the table.
Nowadays, teenage girls have expensive bleached-blonde, over-processed Paris Hilton weaves, which perfectly personifies our clone-like saturated consumerism.
It's true that symbolic change, like the kind they currently long for in America, can ultimately inspire real change. But I doubt whether the Barber of Kildare Street, with its Wash-&-Go Cowhern Special, will do the same.
You can ignore your greasy hair or shake off the dandruff, not talk about it, deny its very existence or pretend it's gone away.
But it won't unless you acknowledge what everyone else can see and start a dialogue about what causes it and how it can be treated.
That's what they are trying to do in Dublin Castle. Otherwise, you may as well save your money on the dye job, short-back-and-sides or hair extensions, stay at home and rearrange the furniture instead.
"I doubt whether the Wash-&-Go Cowhern Special will ultimately inspire real change