Some women spend their lives nurturing a pendulous swathe of waist length hair. For them, it’s the utmost symbol of femininity. A Disney princess ideal that’s spawned a booming business in elaborate hair extensions and is fuelled by a nation’s obsession with a certain breed of Saturday night telly flaxen-locked celebrity. But I have to be honest, long hair creeps me out.

Although my hair is now boyishly short, it hasn’t always been this way. As a young child and later, as a tragically alternative teenager, I sported the sort of scissor-deprived lank locks that attached themselves to passers-by like the tentacles of an octopus. Though the assorted short haircuts that followed weren’t always exactly flattering, it didn’t take me long to realise that boy hair was much more my bag. Now I can’t go more than six weeks without a haircut, it suits my bone structure and besides, there’s nothing I find more alluring than hair you can stick your hand in and ruffle a bit or the tanned nape of a neck against a starched white t-shirt. It’s just the principle boy in me.

And it’s clear I’m not alone. Like every other short haired female I know I keep a collection, some might call it a shrine, of my all-time most iconic crops. They include, but are not exclusive to, Mia Farrow circa 1966, Jean Seberg’s fluffy blonde crop and the time that Kate Moss got all scissor happy in 2001. And doesn’t she, Kate I mean, just look so happy and carefree in those pixie cut days?  That’s kind of what it represents for me. At once a refusenik attitude towards trad beauty norms while also literally liberating a woman from the sheer physical, well, heaviness of hair.

Of course just because I like short hair, doesn’t always mean it looks good. I must admit it’s probably harder to find a decent hair dresser who can shear a good crop than it is one who can give you the most phenomenal blow dry (which incidentally, just does not work on my short hair, the one time I accepted an invitation for one at Harrods I left looking like Lionel Blair). 

"the one time I accepted an invitation for a blow dry I left the salon looking like Lionel Blair"

When I spent some time in India, a land where long, luxe locks are treasured and revered, my cropped hair was the subject of much curiosity for the locals. At the barbers with my boyfriend I was even asked if ‘Sir wanted hair cut too,’ which kind of says it all. But still I am not perturbed.

It’s also not that I want to subject my short haired ways on everyone else, except those who brush their long hair enthusiastically on public transport, for me that’s as bad as clipping your nails (yep, I’ve seen it). But I do take umbrage with anyone who says short hair can’t be feminine. Audrey Tautou is my benchmark of short hair that can be devastatingly sexy too. I’ve also recently reassessed my stance on cropped hair for my wedding day. There was a time when I joked that friends would know when it was on the cards when my fringe got past two inches. But it just wouldn’t be me and this picture of Mia Farrow has well and truly sealed the deal.

I guess what it boils down to is that my short hair obsession also belies one of my biggest character traits, that for some reason I have always strived to be viewed as just a little different. As a beauty construct, short hair allows me this one identity quirk, like someone who likes to wear hats or eccentric tailoring might also mark themselves out as unusual. Looking around the room at any given beauty launch the sheer proliferation of strong, healthy, lustrously long locks is usually obscene, and in that vein, it’s easy for me to mark myself out as an individual. Albeit one with slightly messy unkempt boy hair. And long may it continue.

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