Think back on your favorite fairy tale heroines and their hairstyles. From Rapunzel to Guinevere to the countless busty heiresses in romance novels, they all had one thing in common—good hair. Not just good hair, but long, shiny hair they tossed around, used to its best advantage and even to get out of some sticky situations. One novel I read had the heroine cutting her golden hair off at the waist to save her lover. They, of course, went off to live happily ever after and her hair grew back.
Being that I’m a card holding non-romantic, I was pretty surprised to realize I’ve given most of my characters longer ‘dos then I’d ever consider for my own head. It’s been years since my hair has touched my shoulders and, until this year, it wasn’t even long enough to put in a ponytail. I’ve had it everywhere from Winona Ryder Girl, Interrupted short crop to a whole gallery of Ashley Judd cuts, all of them short. So why do I always give my character long hair? Well not the first thing I consider when putting together a character, their hair status always seems to creep in there somehow.
The main character in my second novel, Starting from Scratch, winds up with a Mia Farrowish pixie cut after a teenage experiment with a home perm kit goes horribly wrong. After that she sticks to the same safe shoulder length style until a sudden break-up has her rethinking a lot about herself, including her hair. And it makes sense for a character to take charge of her life by taking charge of her hair. In Underneath It All, my first book, the main character muses that her boss (who has it all, except great hair) envies her own thick head of hair. She might have to keep tabs on her bosses waxing appointments, but her hair is the kind money can’t buy. Hair is power, sexuality and status all wrapped up together. Tame your hair, and you might hook a hottie, land a promotion or have the kind of hair people envy.
Growing up I remember Wonder Woman’s never had a hair out of place, even when she was deflecting bullets or lassoing bad guys. Then Julia Roberts came along with her mass of curls and managed to make a hooker seem like an All-American kind of girl, albeit one with an unconventional job. Pamela Anderson and her other worldly blonde hair, influenced a whole generation of women to go blonder, not to mention bigger. For whatever their talents and skills, flying an invisible jet while impeccably coiffed is pretty nifty, I think their hair had something to do with their success. I mean, would Pamela Anderson still be Pamela Anderson with a sleek brown bob (and a bra cup size she didn’t have to special order)? Doubt it.
Nowadays they sell long hair, if you’re too busy to grow your own or your follicles just can’t manage it. You can walk into a salon and buy it, be it human (usually from India) or synthetic, which some claim is just as good as the real thing and get it fused to your head for weeks to months of enjoyment. Though it might not help you fight crime, win the heart of a repressed business mogul, or not look ridiculous running on the beach, who wouldn’t like to have long, silky tresses?
Me. That’s who.
So after giving it much thought and waking up to yet another morning where only a ponytail would keep my own hair out of my face and off of my mind, I finally put my hair where my ideal is. I sat myself down in the stylist chair, pulled out my trusty picture of Ashley Judd à la High Crimes, took a deep breath and said, “Give it the chop, please.”
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Hi Margo. I travelled over to your blog from your piece here this morning. What do you mean when you say that you ‘outgrew’ romance?
Probably every romance reader has had periods when they stuffed themselves with the genre so much that they threw up all over their ‘to be read’ pile (a la Jordan Summers post yesterday) but it’s more a ‘too much cake batter; it’s making me sick’ than an ‘I’m too old to be swiping cake batter off the bowl’ reaction.
Oh, yes, hair!
Mine must be long and red always. If it starts growing out and turning gray, I feel ugly. Something about my husband dreaming about a redhead once. Here are my favorate heads of hear:
Lots of long, black kinks
Lots of long, black braids
Bright red curls
Dark red and smooth
I was long and blond as a teen, but now it seems overdone to me.:wink:
But don’t you love how the heroines can stuff all that long flowing hair under a cap (without a single hairpin)when they have to pretend to be a stable boy and even after a harrowing ride on horseback the cap never comes off and the hair stays put? I envy the talented tresses!
Hair appropriate to the characterization works for me, whether it’s long and lush or short and sassy. (Pardon the alliterations.) I also like it when hair woes work for the character. One of my favorite descriptions is in Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ Heaven, Texas when she says that heroine Gracie Snow is having a bad hair month. When we first meet her, she has a bad sense of style in clothes and hair, is clumsy and somewhat awkward and also incredibly sweet with her own brand of spirit. Putting her into the orbit of the gorgeous, outrageous, over-confident football star makes for a great struggle of opposites.
For me — I prefer low maintenance hair. I hate glopping on gels and mousses and will only use hair spray under great duress — like the time I was maid of honor in my friend’s wedding and monsoon-like weather hit. The stylist shellacked my hair strand by strand. Torrential rain and gusty winds couldn’t budge my ‘do.
Oh, I agree that hair should be a part of the characterization. In Star Captains’ Daughter, Junior and her mother are the only two humans left with red hair. I read somewhere that the gene for red hair would be extinct within a couple hundred years.:smile:
I went bald, not a tactic I recommend. When my wife married me, though, I had a ponytail.
We just spent $95 having extensions braided into our youngest daughter’s hair. She now has shoulder-blade length with chestnut and auburn braided into her own dark brown. She likes the long braids in winter because they keep her neck warm. In summer the braids are gone and her natural hair is scunchied out of her way. Until about a month ago, our 20-year-old son had the longest hair in the family, but he got tired of his dreds and now sports a uniform 3/4 inch. Our eldest (24) has about 4 inches of hair which is brick red and stands straight up. My wife has her hair straightened just to keep it out of her way.
All of my heroines have short hair. As in an inch or so. The only exception is Anastasia Kerensky in Wolf Hunters. She’s a major series character whom I inherited from four other writers. She has long, flowing red hair.
Strangely, I always write hair I know.
The length and style change drastically through my stories, but I borrow people’s hair so I know if they can sleep without pulling it back, how long it takes to dry, how often it has to be cut, and what it looks like in the morning. It’s a strange twist of my process, but I have to know the hair.
I thought of having mine chopped on Friday. I went in with the intent. And came out with a more layered version. I wasn’t ready. What would I play with while thinking if I couldn’t twirl a curl?
I never thought much about it, but I tend to write hair I can’t possibly ever have. I’m blond, mid-length, which is fine, and I’ve had every do in between. But it won’t grow really long, and my coloring is no good for any other color, much as I long to try them. Maybe it’s the way I get to try out things that can never be…