I have a complicated relationship with my hair. A hate-love tug of war that started when I was small. A battle that only ended when I accepted that I was never going to win.
Before I go any further, let’s deal with the ginger elephant in the room. This is not a piece about having ginger hair, but it’s impossible to talk about my hair without acknowledging its colour. I was the only ginger in the class and that, plus the fact that my hair was by even the kindest definition ‘big’ – wiry, curly, wayward – lay at the root of the problem. (Remember Crystal Tipps of the children’s cartoon Crystal Tipps and Alistair? Keep that image in your mind.)
Picture, if you will, a school nativity play in the early 1970s in an extremely unmixed infants’ school in the south of England. Stage crammed with small fair-haired people. Mary, cute, blonde. Ditto the shepherds and kings. Even the donkeys were blonde. All the girls who weren’t Mary were angels. Every last one of them, or so it felt to me, with straight blonde hair falling softly around their shoulders or up in bunches. And then there was me, tenth angel on the left. With my Curly. Wayward. Ginger. Hair.
I stood out like a sore thumb. It’s the first time I remember feeling certain that life would be better if I could just grow and ideally completely change the style, colour and texture of my hair.
Then came secondary school and the era of the flick. Trisha on Grange Hill had hair to die for. Fair and straight, stretching down her back but with a massive, flicky fringe. The flick was bang on trend in the late 70s and all the cool girls had one. If I was ever to have a hope of fitting in, I had to get one.
I found a picture in Jackie magazine of a pretty girl with big brown eyes and the flick of dreams. I tore it out and went to the hairdresser. She pointed out gently that the girl in the picture had fine, poker-straight hair and I… didn’t. It was an enormous red flag. But I did what I always did with red flags: ignored it and ploughed on through.
It was only after I washed my hair myself (isn’t it always the way?) that I realised the enormity of what I’d done. Thick and wiry, it sat like a ginger hat on my head. I hated it and it hated me right back.
After that I tried everything. I went to bed with it wet – and woke up with it in clumps. I went to bed with it dry – ditto. I wore a scarf to bed to flatten it and woke up with it still lumpy but stuck to my head. I tried Shaders & Toners in a rich dark chestnut. It interacted with the ginger and came out burgundy. I tried Sun In. The result was khaki.
The only ginger angel in the school nativity
My hair just wouldn’t grow. Or, more accurately, it would but it grew out, not down. Every time I tried to get it past my ears it would reach triangle status and I’d crack and cry and get it all cut off again.
You’ll love it when you’re older, grown-ups would say endlessly, of the colour and the waves. I know people who’d pay a fortune for hair like yours. Teenage me didn’t give a monkey’s about ‘when I was older’. All I cared about was right now and, right now, my hair that kinked in all the wrong directions was ‘ruining my life’.
Salvation came in the unlikely form of – wait for it – a perm! I know how ludicrous this sounds. Girl who hates her curly hair gets perm to make it curlier… But this was, by then, the early 80s. Perms were everywhere, and the hairdresser insisted that making the curl look intentional would at least help me grow out the pesky short bits.
It worked! And I never looked back. Except for one ill-advised break-up cut in my last year of university in Birmingham, when I decided that what I really needed was a bob. Eight inches and an hour later the hairdresser spun me around. There, in the mirror, was the hateful triangle of curly ginger hair.
My friends kindly kept their opinions to themselves. All except one. A girl in the same tutor group as me – her name was Erica, I’ll never forget it – looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘I preferred it long.’
Me too, Erica. Me too.
With the perm that changed everything
That was almost 40 years ago, and I learned my lesson. Apart from annual visits to the hairdresser to get the split ends cut off, I haven’t messed with it since. Now, I’m 5ft 3½in, and my hair reaches almost to the base of my spine.
‘Hair is everything,’ said Fleabag (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) when her sister Claire (played by Sian Clifford) wore a disastrous asymmetrical crop that made her look like ‘a pencil’. ‘It’s the difference between a good day and a bad day…’
My teenage years were one big bad hair day. Once I stopped fighting it, my hair – which I had always believed was my worst feature – morphed into my best. It began to define me, but in a positive way.
As it grew, the confidence sapper became the confidence giver. It entered the room before I did. I realised it didn’t much matter what I wore because all people saw when they looked at me was, frankly, a mane of ginger hair.
I remember talking to the fashion influencer Kat Farmer about accessories on my podcast, The Shift with Sam Baker, and confiding that I didn’t really know how to accessorise. ‘You don’t need to,’ Kat said. ‘Your hair is your accessory.’ How right she was. And I would be lost without it.
‘Your hair is fabulous,’ I am frequently told, and I admit I bask in its reflected glory. Just as frequently, it’s followed by, ‘It must be a nightmare to look after.’
Occasionally, someone (usually a magazine editor who wants me to write about it, or a middle-aged man with firm views about how women should age) will ask me when (not if) I’m going to cut it all off. Like I missed the memo that says women over 50 shouldn’t have long hair. I probably file this advice alongside that from the people telling me how women of my age should dress and behave. In the bin.
It took too long to reach the point where I recognised the genetic blessing of my hair, I’m hanging on to it.
Also, the biggest irony of all is that my long hair is the most low-maintenance it’s ever been. It’s thick and dry, so I wash it fortnightly. (L’Oréal Paris Elvive Dream Lengths Shampoo and Conditioner, and 8 Second Wonder Water on the ends – I swear by that.) It’s not a speedy wash, and those dry ends suck up the conditioner, but I’m sure it’s not the time- or money-sap of washing it every other day.
It does take hours to dry (hot tip: Bouclème Curl Towel avoids roughing up the cuticles), but I just whack on some Moroccan Oil Treatment to tame the frizz and let the air do its worst. (Blow-dries are strictly for special occasions, when I pay someone else’s arms to take the strain.) I never brush it because the frizz loves that and I only tie it up to go to the gym.
I love my hair now I’m older. If only some wise grown-up had told me that decades ago!
Styling: Hope Palmer
Shirt, WNU. Jeans and jewellery, Sam’s own
Hair and make-up: Julie Reid at Carol Hayes
