When my hair starts getting accidentally tucked into the back of my high-waisted jeans, I know it’s time for a trim. And by trim, I mean what hairstylists call “a dusting.” Once, during said dusting, the editorial hairdresser Kevin Mancuso smirked, “You better be careful, or your hair’s going to get caught in the escalator at Barneys.” This should give you an indication of my age, since I, like many of my Generation X cohorts, spent my post-collegiate days in New York City hanging out at the famed (now devastatingly defunct) specialty store. They say one should cut their hair once they reach a certain decade. But to that, I say … not on your life. And this life is mine.I’ve been acutely aware of my hair since I was a small child. Growing up as a redhead forges a strong personality and a distinct self-consciousness that stems from having a mane that’s decidedly different. As legend has it, I even popped out of the womb with, as my raven-haired mother liked to recall, orange kinks all over my head. My childhood was spent with my long locks plaited into a butt-length braid, the bottom third left loose, like an impressionist’s lush paintbrush. At 14, I got recruited by a local hair salon to join a blonde-brunette-redhead trio of roller-skating hair models. Every Saturday, I dutifully showed up at 9 a.m. to have my hair washed, blown-dry, and set into a voluminous tumble of waves that caught the attention of every passerby in town. It was the best job I ever had.
“If you can have hair that’s this long and thick and healthy, why not show it off?!”
While nipple-length was my go-to before the pandemic, months in lockdown led to letting my hair grow … and grow. I liked to say that I got the last best haircut in New York City before the world shut down. I had snagged a coveted appointment with my hair guru at the time, Serge Normant, on March 12, 2020 — the day before my last day in the office. Serge is not just any hairstylist. He is the mane man behind Hollywood’s best tressed; think Sarah Jessica Parker, Julia Roberts, Amal Clooney, Cindy Crawford, you name it. Picture any major ‘90s glamazon image with hair filling the frame, and chances are Serge created the look. I always loved sitting in his chair, because unlike other stylists who would eye my length judgmentally and try to bully me into cutting, say, a lob, Serge’s love for extra-long hair matched my own. “Let’s just snip an inch, an inch-and-a-half,” he’d say. “If you can have hair that’s this long and thick and healthy, why not show it off?!”
Six years later, my strands are not the only thing that’s grown; so has my Samson-like conviction that my strength, my zhuzh, lies in my locks. My hair has become my defining characteristic — and my point of differentiation. And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that also, keeping my hair megalong has become my armor; a bit of rebellion against the trope that women of a certain age should go for the big chop. We are told — gently at first, and then with increasing urgency — that, as we age, our hair must retreat. It must shorten. It must become more manageable, ordered, age-appropriate. The unspoken message is that devil-may-care hair belongs to youth. There’s an implication, a sort-of social contract, that as we age we should choose efficiency over romance, practicality over wildness. But I am deeply uninterested in this trade. And I’ve never been one to follow convention or alter my appearance to satisfy the hegemony.
I’m not alone in my zeal. I belong to a secret society, a sisterhood, of quiet power brokers who refuse to live by the hair rules. A ballet dancer in her youth, Laura Regensdorf, 42, a beauty writer for the New York Times, had to keep her hair extra long. “When I was a kid, you almost couldn’t cut your hair because you needed to be able to pull it back into a bun for uniformity’s sake,” she says. But today, the lustrous strands that graze the top of her thighs hold an entirely different meaning. “There’s a resoluteness in the maintenance,” she says, matter-of-factly. Plus, now, her hair actually sets her apart. “I think I’m a quiet person otherwise, who doesn’t usually walk into a room and tell the loudest story — so there’s something kind of powerful to have a signature that speaks for you.”
For others, the feminine mystique of exaggeratedly lengthy locks — akin to the women depicted in Renaissance paintings like Botticelli’s Birth of Venus — is a gateway to reclaiming the feeling of lost youth that can be synonymous with mid-life and perimenopause. My friend Melissa Green Hewitt, a fragrance industry executive, shakes her waist-length mane of strawberry blonde ripples over a glass of wine, the ends narrowly avoiding an anointing in merlot. “It makes me feel younger, it makes me feel more sensual,” says the 50-year-old of her epic hair. “I grew it after my divorce,” she confides. “And it made me feel more like myself. I was finding my light again. It made me shine.”
From Chloe to Simone Rocha, that kind of ownership of self-assured femininity was all over the runways this season, too. And on screen, undone, ethereal Hamnet-core hair was as much a part of Jessie Buckley’s awards season-sweeping portrayal of Agnes as her nonconforming red dress. Here, untamed tresses became the embodiment of a woman both wild and soft, passionate and knowing, keen, yet unabashedly capable. Truly a representation of fully expressed, brave, untethered womanhood.
“Long hair is a superpower,” says celebrity hairstylist and TikTok-favorite Clayton Hawkins. “And if you’re over 40 and have a healthy, glorious mane, rock on.” Indeed, some women choose to keep their hair long simply because they can. At a wedding in Miami a month ago, I found myself behind a gorgeous goddess waiting to go through security at the venue. From my rear view, she was wearing a one-shoulder gown that looked spectacular and had thick, luxurious, flaxen tresses that were practically to her bum. When we came face-to-face at cocktail hour, martinis in hand, I was awestruck by her 74-year-old face etched with beautiful experience. Has she ever thought about cutting her hair, I asked? She offered a one-word answer with a sly shrug, unapologetically: “Why?”
Why are we demanded to be one thing or another? I defy those tired tropes like I avoid scissors. I choose to not choose to fit into any picture of who I should be or how I should move through this world, now or ever. In my fifth decade, what I want has come sharply into focus — and that just happens to be the swish of unbridled freedom, cascading with lightness down my back.
Read the Fall/Winter Issue of GRAZIA USA featuring cover star Louisa Jacobson:
