Toil and hair trouble

OPINION: So it appears I may have inadvertently given myself dreadlocks. And by "appears" I mean "I'm too frightened to actually look" and by "inadvertently" I really mean "accidentally-on-purpose", writes Sarah McCarthy in this week's Uptown Girl.

What's happened is this. For the Shakespeare play thing I did – which you better have all come and seen because it was a glass and a half of full cream dairy awesome – I first crimped and then teased my thick, fine hair as a means to save time and effort during the costuming process (the way I said "thick, fine hair" sounded bokey, sorry, but I simply mean to make sure you have all the information before continuing with the story – not describe myself in chick-lit terms, as in "she had a heart-shaped face and almond-shaped green eyes that flashed with anger when she met the guy in the first chapter that she hated but would end up with in the last chapter bla bla vomit"). Now, my hair is naughty – naughty step, Periodic Detention naughty.

I could dye it green and it would end up the same colour as always, a slightly warm blonde, and I could probably get an 80s-style spiral perm and the bastarding stuff would be straight by lunchtime. And as a busy wife and executive I didn't have time to be fannying about with crimpers and hairbrushes before every show, as well as getting made uglier by the make-up queens and trying to cantilever my bazoombas into my costume and sneaking out for cigarettes and wrangling slime. So I simply teased the bajanx out of it the Thursday before last and haven't brushed it since – I've washed it, naturally, but that's about it. Hence the dreadlocks.

Well, they're not actually dreadlocks, really, more like massive spider-webby patches of interlocking hair that have adhered themselves to my scalp and each other, so I suppose dreadlock may be more of an accurate description.

I am assuming I will be able to tip a bottle of expensive conditioner on to my head, wrap the whole sorry mess up in glad wrap for an hour or so and then run a comb through it and it will be fine.

I'm not that concerned. I am the mildly blonde who has famously not conditioned her hair for many months, and have also spent many patient hours sitting behind a girlfriend of mine, patiently combing out the dreads that formed in the back of her hair rather naturally. And they've always come out. Even the tough ones.

But I feel a bit self-conscious abut the whole deal, I'm paranoid people will think, despite squeezing the whole lot into a ponytail, I've given myself dreads in a sad sort of defiant, fat 30-something way, like people who come home from island holidays with those braids. I am not a dread person. I could be an ill-advised perm person, but not a dread person. Not enough ironic T-Shirts in my wardrobe.

Whatever the outcome (ie: if I have to shave my head) it will have been worth it, as yet again doing Shakes has been just fabulous.

» Sarah McCarthy is a Southland Times staff member.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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