Friday, July 10, 2009

Bad hair day

I'm having a bad hair day. I know it's a weak excuse for a blog post, but really for me it's quite an issue.

It's not that my hair looks terrible. It's just that I woke up today and no matter what I try my hair comes out looking like it did in 1985. I did consider the possibility that I was caught in some sort of time warp (and even more fleetingly consider that I might be getting younger rather than older), but no luck on either front.

And you know what's worse? No one noticed!

* * *

Perhaps they were being too polite to say anything? But didn't they notice this big wavy flip that has taken root on my scalp? Perhaps my new glasses were distracting them from noticing. It was one of those days when I said to myself, lucky I don't have to look nice today! But wait, don't I want to look nice every day like one of those creatures who inhabit the streets of Paris with an elegantly bored expression on their face? 

Speaking of that, I've actually gotten good at a related expression, that of looking on with interest as though I'm uninterested - you know, one of those I happen to be looking, but truly I could care less looks? The key here is that you shouldn't look bored and uninterested, but instead alert albeit disinterested. Noticing things without being curious, taking it all in with at most a slight flicker that any of it really matters. Not scowling, not pleasantly vacuous, but self-contained and neutral. It's the kind of look that is usually turned on me by someone who is too impossibly elegant to bothering looking at me. 

But even though I'm not too impossibly anything, I've been working up the look. And you know what? Sadly or happily it seems to work. I can make shop assistants come running with a glance and dismiss even the haughtiest of their species with the slightest quiver.

But of course only on a good hair day, not to mention a regular hair day, and not even to begin to think about a day like today, a bad hair day.

BB

2 comments:

Unknown said...

i think i have been having a bad hair day since 1985! ;) truthfully, my hair only looks "great" when i am on the way to the hairdresser to get it cut...

i am reminded of one comment someone wrote on the sartorialist's blog re: a photo of a boy in paris.. "god is dead but my hair is great"... brilliant!

and re:the concept of the interested/disinterested look...don't ask me why....but shop assistants do come running..especially in paris...!!!???

Claire said...

I should consider a hat.

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