The Sissel concert on PBS last night was great. It was filmed in the picturesque Norwegian town of Røros in wintertime, the music itself performed in a historic church there. Very classy and reverent, I thought. And, needless to say, The Greatest Voice in the World soared through the pure, arctic air, delivering beauty like an angelic UPS truck. Or something.
My only unhappiness concerned Sissel’s hair. As is so often the case.
I care about women’s hair. It has something to do with an experience I had once, which it would be lugubrious to recount now (I suspect I’ve already told the story in this space, or on the old site, anyway). But I’ve always had strong opinions on women’s hair.
If you look at pictures of Sissel in the early stages of her career, you’ll see a lovely young girl with long, thick, honey-colored hair. That’s how she looked when I first became a fan, and that’s the image I imprinted on.
But it all changed around the time of the Winter Olympics in Norway in 1994. There she appeared, suddenly, and to the great shock of most, at the opening ceremonies with short, dark hair. Her hairstyle has changed constantly in the years since, but has generally been more or less that sort of thing.
Since her marriage broke up she seems to have grown it out a little, but for the concert she appeared in some kind of avant-garde coiffure that looked both oily and swirly. It was not becoming, in the eyes of this obsessive fan.
Why do women do this? I don’t know a lot about women, it goes without saying, but I’m pretty sure they tend to be more insecure about how they look than men are. That being true, why do they consistently put themselves in the hands of hairdressers of ambiguous gender, and trust them when they say, “Oh, darling, we’ll just streak your hair with purple, and lacquer it, and make it stand out straight from the left side of your skull so you look like a character from Anime! You’ll look divine!”
Any man can easily tell you what we want in a woman’s hair. Like most things about men, it’s very simple: “Long. Grow it as long as you can. Never cut it. Split ends? What are those? Dry, fly-away hair? Who cares?”
Show me a woman who wears her hair extremely long, and I’ll show you a woman who understands men deeply.
Of course a woman who wears her hair extremely short probably understands men deeply too.
Which sort is wiser, I’m not qualified to say.
Yes, I’ve seen her hair look a little unappealing, but a woman is more than her hair. Sissel is gorgeous not matter what she does to her hair.
I think women work with their hair based on their own needs, emotions, and reactions. She may have wanted something different, so she got it cut. She may have wanted it more manageable. Wash and wear clothing has it’s appeal for the user, even if sometimes it isn’t appealing to a viewer. I’ve seen a particular hairstyle on some women which I think barely works even for the most attractive of them. It’s frizzy or close to it, but I hear that it’s very easy to care for.
Most women don’t really know why they do the things they do to their hair.
I think it is in hope that we will really end up looking like the models in the mags. Yes, the ones who sit for hours in the chair and let gay men decide what makes them look sexy.
Fortunately, there’s more to a woman than the way she wears her hair.