All Natural Hair Is Beautiful
And the Best Things in Life Are Free
You all were very kind last week when I confessed to a moral failure—that we returned a sweet dog we had planned to adopt to her foster family. I am grateful for your understanding comments and messages!
So this week I’m trusting you with a confession that is even more shameful—that I am a great big cheapskate. My husband, Matt, and I have one car, a nine-year-old Honda Civic. Except for replacing my hiking boots every year, I never buy shoes or clothes. In fact you will often catch me wearing my kids’ hand-me-downs. My skincare regimen is drugstore moisturizer and sunscreen and nothing else. We go out for pizza every few weeks but otherwise never dine out. You get the idea. I can’t bear to waste money on nonessentials. The best things in life are free.
A disclaimer: This post will discuss the advantages of being cheapskates about our hair. I believe that no one should feel obligated to spend money on their hair just because some looks are considered more acceptable than others. But please do not feel judged if you enjoy going to the salon and/or feel better about yourself when your hair is colored and styled. A fortiori, if your job requires you to wear your hair a certain way, please feel free to skip the rest of this post. I am hoping to liberate people who can’t (or don’t want to) pay to change how they look. But of course if we want and can afford to spend money on our hair (or anything else), we should go ahead, guilt-free.
Still with me? Great! Let’s start with a story:
Many years ago, we lived in a tony New Jersey suburb. We were only able to afford to live there because we lucked into the money for a down payment for our modest house.1 When our son, Noah, was in second grade, he attended a tae kwon doh birthday party and was hooked. He asked for lessons, and so we enrolled him in a local studio, where he went three times a week for four years. He sparred, learned forms, broke boards, achieved a full split, and earned his provisional black belt.
The studio’s owner, Master Jeff, was a former Navy SEAL and a true mensch. He taught the kids resilience and self-control. He reminded them that they had the power to decide whether or not to be bothered by the way other people treated them. This lesson was invaluable to Noah when he was bullied in middle school. He took Master Jeff’s words to heart and chose to shrug it off when other kids were being mean.2 Six years later, Noah was selected by his high school classmates to speak at graduation. He began his speech by thanking Master Jeff for encouraging him to focus his energies not on conforming to other kids’ opinions, but on achieving his goals.
Tae kwon doh was priceless, but it wasn’t cheap. How did we manage to pay for it when we were living in an expensive town on one salary? One reason was that I believe that all natural hair is beautiful, and I live by this belief. I go to Great Clips a few times a year to have my split ends trimmed but otherwise spend nothing on my hair. No product, dye, highlights, styling, extensions, or blowouts, ever. I calculated that the money we saved because I accept my hair the way it grows out of my head more than offset the tae kwon doh tuition.
So many of us struggle to be satisfied with our hair just the way it is. When I was a kid, people in our community felt that their fine, straight, Scandinavian hair wasn’t good enough, and so everyone got perms. When we lived in New Jersey, people in our community felt that their thick, lush, luxurious curls weren’t good enough, and so they got their hair straightened at weekly blowouts. Until the pandemic closed salons, it was anathema for women to show any gray. And whatever our natural hair color and texture, online influencers make us yearn for their blonde highlights and beachy waves.3
I have been thinking about the media’s influence on our hair ever since my husband and I streamed the nineties series Homicide, and I was wowed by Melissa Leo’s unkempt natural curls:
Leo’s hair is remarkable for its rarity in current media. It used to be the case that actresses in movies and shows were considered beautiful even though they sported pixie cuts, untamed manes, and everything in between. But nowadays we almost never see women’s natural hair colors and textures in social and entertainment media. Or if we do, the woman is either meant to be homely, or she gets a makeover to rectify her objectionable hair. These pervasive messages make it difficult for us regular folks to accept ourselves as we are.
Readers, is the hair Mother Nature gave you straight, wavy, curly, or kinky? Black, brown, red, blonde, salt-and-pepper, gray, or white? Thick, fine, thinning, or gone for good? It’s all beautiful!4 Let it fly! The more of us who are confident about our natural hair, the easier it will be for others to avoid the unnecessary expense of changing themselves to adhere to unattainable media images.
And while we’re at it, whence this sudden irrational animus against beards? Is Pete Hegseth unaware that observant Muslims, Jews, and Sikhs are required to wear beards, and that it would be a waste (and also unconstitutional) to fire so many soldiers simply because they are religious? Or that many Black men wear beards to avoid a painful and disfiguring skin condition? Or that clean-shaven soldiers stick out like a sore thumb in communities where the men are bearded, making covert military operations more difficult? Or that, heck, beards look really nice?
I have a theory. Hegseth is of Norwegian descent. I suspect that his facial hair, like that of many men of Norwegian ancestry, comes in thin and patchy. Maybe he is secretly jealous of his virile, hirsute compatriots.5
But I digress.
Finally, and I will tread delicately here, the same principle applies to what Alexander Pope refers to as “Hairs less in sight.”6 Why do we now expect that women and, increasingly, men, undergo expensive, inconvenient, and painful treatments in order to be totally denuded of all body hair? I’ll go ahead and say what everyone is thinking: This expectation comes from porn. But porn is not the boss of us! We can just say no. Or, better yet, we can channel our inner Steve Carell and say, “You know what, guys? This is not a good look for me!”
If going to the hair (or waxing) salon isn’t fun for us, and if our work doesn’t require us to meet a particular grooming standard, we might want to ask ourselves whether there is something else we could be doing with the time and money we have been spending on our hair. It is heartening to see that since the pandemic, many women have decided to let their hair go gray. Others of us have joined the We Do Not Care Club and have let go of unrealistic expectations (and pointless expenditures). And when we see a celebrity or friend who no longer strives to achieve a perfect appearance, we can change our thinking. Instead of lamenting to ourselves that she has let herself go, we can celebrate her for setting herself free.
How about you, readers? Is there anything you’re a proud cheapskate about? How do you feel about your hair? What is something free that is the best thing in life for you? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
The Tidbit
In my opinion, the best season of The White Lotus is season two, and the best moment in season two occurs below, when Mia finally gets a chance to show off her chops as a jazz musician. Do any of the wretched, kvetching guests at this luxury resort pick up on the message of this song? Will they ever realize that spending their millions isn’t making them happy? We can hope!
We bought a condo in DC back when Marion Barry was mayor and the city was so dysfunctional that no one wanted to live there. Shortly after we bought our place, Anthony Williams was elected mayor, and the DC housing market exploded. Our condo doubled in value in five years. I once ran into Mayor Williams at a diner and thanked him for our unearned windfall.
As just one example, Noah was supposed to sit next to one of his bullies during middle-school graduation. We asked to have Noah moved so he could enjoy the ceremony in peace, but the school—may its name be blotted out—refused. Sure enough, as the kids were proceeding in, the bully started poking Noah. Noah wheeled around and said, “Seriously!? You’re doing this now?!” The kid stopped.
There are numerous online tutorials for how to achieve beachy waves. (Here’s a representative one.) These influencers all claim that the style is “effortless,” but they apparently define “effortless” differently than regular people do. Beachy waves require a blow-dryer, clips, curling iron, special brush, texture spray, beach-wave spray, hairspray, and a multi-step procedure. Who even has the time or the cash?
I refer readers who think bald can’t be beautiful to the photo of Master Jeff, above, or, for that matter, to any photo of Ed Harris or Michael Jordan. And if anyone gives you a hard time about your bald pate, you can quote a former acquaintance of mine and tell them that you don’t waste your hormones growing hair.
Or maybe he is dissing JD Vance when he ridicules “beardos”?
This line is from Pope’s mock-heroic poem The Rape of the Lock (1714), canto IV, line 176. The Baron cuts off a lock of Belinda’s hair to display to all and sundry, and Belinda is understandably angry: “Oh hadst thou, Cruel! been content to seize / Hairs less in sight, or any Hairs but these!” Her words inadvertently reveal that she is already sleeping with the Baron and wouldn’t mind if he had grabbed some of her pubic hair as a private trophy, but she objects to the public evidence of their affair. Quite a risqué joke for the eighteenth century!
My husband commented one day, about 10 years ago, as to how grey my hair was getting. I told him if he wanted me to spend about $200 a month to keep talking! He didn’t!! I love how my hair has gone grey and often get compliments on the color. I do regularly get cuts as I wear it short but that’s all!
Funny true from a friend who had undergone cancer treatments and lost her hair. She was at with a group of us wearing a headscarf, she decided to take it off and show us her new look. We all congratulated her on her bravery. She then said why is it after losing her hair the hair that grew back first were the chin and upper lip hairs!!! And they were dark and wirery!!!! We all laughed at the thought!!
As a perimenopausal woman and fellow member of the We Do Not Care Club, this message is timely. Every day as I wipe my shedding hair off the bathroom counter, I contemplate where this once thick head of hair will land (follicularly, that is — hoping to keep my head!). I also wish I’d had a Master Jeff cross my path when I was in elementary school — what a gem!