Dear Carol...

Dear Carol,

I think my husband may be on to me. Since having my hair cut on Saturday, he has twice remarked on the resemblance of my style to yours – to quote him “Your hair has definitely got that woman from Episodes things going on. You know the one I mean”. This is serious. For all his positive qualities, he is not normally well known for his powers of observation.

The thing is, I am now at a stage where I am ready to take things a step further. I blame the weather. You see, living in a relatively temperate climate, where temperatures do not normally fluctuate too wildly, I have never really had a great need for different seasonal wardrobes. This year, however, our unusually hot summer means I am no longer able to just wear what I wear all year round, and I need to adapt.

I know I’ll never quite manage the perfect six-pack or brilliant white teeth of a single American career gal, but I feel I need to be more aspirational in my business dress. For it’s true, my work wardrobe is looking dated, and I am wishing to import your brand of easy-yet-formal-hot weather-LA-chic to darkest Wiltshire. The whole slightly-harassed-and-sweaty-working-mother look is one, which, quite frankly, I feel I am starting to tire of.

Therefore, while there are certain elements of your lifestyle I have no wish to emulate (recreational drug use has never been my thing, and, nice as he is, I have never felt any desire to sleep with my boss), I find myself more and more frequently asking myself WHAT WOULD CAROL WEAR.

The problem is, I know you’d probably wear this:

Source

And, as we all know, there is NO WAY sensible to me will ever wear a jumpsuit. I'm therefore thankful that you're off my screen for a while. I will miss you though.

But I'll miss your wardrobe more.

Yours infatuatedly,
Julie

Hair Dilemmas

Hair is weird, isn't it? Women spend forever fussing over it. If it's not removing excess body hair (a whole separate subject in its own right), it's fiddling with the stuff on our heads.
My own hair has been on my mind a lot lately as I know it's time for another visit to the hairdresser. I know this, because I have started tying my hair back a lot because it just doesn't quite sit right any more. Luckily I know a trip to my trusty salon will sort me out pretty quickly. (I've perfected the art of the messy bun by now, and although I'd love to attempt a thick, luscious ponytail as modelled by Victoria Beckham et al, somehow it just looks like a scraggy 5 year old's... which does make me wonder - how old is too old for a ponytail?) 

I have a good relationship with my hairdresser - I've been going to the same salon for longer than I care to remember, and, with the exception of her two maternity leaves, the same stylist has chopped my locks for that time (including wedding hair, the lot). It's fair to say I trust her judgement and she knows the kind of thing that would work with my "lifestyle", my poker straight tresses, face shape, blah, blah.

It's been a while since my last visit, and I probably shouldn't have left it as long as I have. It's been even longer since I last had the colour tended to. Much as it might shock some of you to learn (ahem), while I would class myself as a "natural blonde" for want of any other definition, the shade I have sported for probably the last ten years is a tad lighter than what nature blessed me with. I have to look back at old pictures to remind myself that I actually quite like my natural colour. Unfortunately for it, most of the time now I merely think of it as "roots" when the blonde highlights haven't been touched up.

All those chemicals can't be good for it, however, and I think it might be time to give my hair a bit of a rest from all those poxygloxylycins. The thing that has occurred to me, however, is what happens if the colour underneath has changed after all these years? What if I'm - horror of horrors - going grey?! Of course there is really only one way to find out, and luckily for women it's more socially acceptable to go back to dying hair...

Maybe I should try a blonde afro?

Blonde, brunette, redhead - is it all the same?

DD1 is a little mini-me, DD2 is like a female version of hubby - they couldn't look more different.

I'm naturally a sort of dark, honey blonde, currently sporting lighter highlights. My husband had jet black hair when I met him, and is now a sort of George Clooney grey. My mother is a redhead (getting paler of course now). DD2 has been taking a lot of notice of hair colour suddenly, so this has somehow become important. She often goes around pointing out what colour someone's hair is. For example, she points out that mummy's and her sister's hair is blonde.

Suddenly last week, however, she decided that she also wanted to be blonde. I had to explain that her hair was dark, like daddy's. "no", she said "daddy's hair is grey". Ok, fair point. She then thought hard. "My hair is a little bit blonde, underneath".

I'm surprised that she feels so strongly about this. However, it did get me thinking about what hair colour says about me. In some ways, I do not really have a huge amount of choice - lighter is all I can realistically go without it looking too strange on me. I have therefore only ever been varying shades of blond. I can be no other way without changing my appearance drastically and it looking strange.

I do sometimes wonder if being blonde is a help or a hindrance. At work, I certainly stand out, which can be positive. On the other hand, I have also experienced surprise that I am at my relative level of seniority, as I suppose in some ways I look younger than my years.

Is hair colour important, or just another element of your appearance? Has changing your hair colour made others react to you differently?