What's at the root of our hair choices? Three writers unravel the state of their strands—read the stories below, here, and here.


It’s only hair,” I exclaimed defiantly while cutting my own bangs with nail scissors the night before my wedding. “You can’t be too precious about it,” I explained to my kids after getting a pixie cut on a whim while they were at school. “Your hair is your greatest accessory, play with it,” I’ve written throughout my career as a beauty editor. And I’ve practiced what I preached being the proud owner of not just the aforementioned pixie but many other short styles: a mullet, a blunt bob, a wolf cut, and, yes, even a Dorothy Hamill wedge long after she won gold.

But here I find myself, at 52, letting my signature short hair grow to shoulder length. At 25, a pixie was bold, edgy, sexy. Then something happened as I took a nosedive into middle age. Short hair started to feel boring, expected, and…dare I say it? Coastal Grandma. I blame the old tropes—the ones I thought I was immune to: “Cutting your hair is like publicly resigning from your sex life”…“Short hair is mannish”…“You’ll look like a Golden Girl.” I’d never listened to that hot garbage before, so why would I when I’m old enough to know better? Possibly because now that I am in my 50s and my kids are older, society treats me like the invisible woman. And I’m holding on to every last strand to call attention to the fact that I’m still here.

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At 25, a pixie was bold, edgy, sexy. Then something happened as I took a nosedive into middle age.

The irony is that going shorter may actually be the sexier move as the years tick on. “Most of us don’t have the same hair we did at 20—thick, shiny, and bouncy,” says Adir Abergel, the master stylist who has worked with short-haired celebs including Charlize Theron, Cate Blanchett, and Jennifer Garner (now the owner of a cute lob). “Hair ages.” It gets drier, growth slows, and the strands we do have tend to fall out more easily. The right chop can make it look much healthier and fuller. And, fortunately, the short cuts of today do not require a weekly wash-and-set at the salon that resulted in that ubiquitous Golden Girls pouf. Just “look to Robin Wright, Annette Bening, or Jamie Lee Curtis,” says celebrity hairstylist Tommy Buckett. He’s right. They have sex appeal coming out of their ears. The key to these successful styles, says Tiffany Kaljic, the owner of L’Appartement Hair Boudoir in New York City, is soft layers around the face and the nape of the neck, which flatters skin that doesn’t quite drape like it used to and hair that doesn’t quite grow like it used to.

Still, while I get all the rational arguments for why now may, in fact, be the best time for a woman of my age to go short, I’ve never been that rational. (Need proof? Look at how that bang trim worked out in my wedding album.) I just can’t bring myself to go Audrey (Tautou or Hepburn) again. Instead, I’m contemplating a choppy, just-above-the-shoulders-length shag. In a way, it feels like the best way to honor this life stage—neither here nor there, neither old nor young. Much like midlife itself.

didi gluck

Didi Gluck is a New York City–based writer and editor who dreams of going to cosmetology school someday.