What’s up with big hair?

By Rebecca Willis

You can learn a lot from what you don’t find on the supermarket shelves. Hair products, for instance, are obsessed with volumising, thickening and lifting, but it’s impossible to find a single one that offers the flattening, thinning or drooping options. Well, there was one “for dull, lifeless hair”, but I’m pretty sure it is promising to cure that condition rather than cause it. (The word “for” is ambiguous – where were the marketing people in that meeting?) Pedantry aside, though, the message is clear: the beauty industry is trying to defy gravity over every inch of our bodies, including our hair.

Big Hair is having a moment. It has been for a long time. I’m not averse to a bit of back-combing myself, in an attempt to get some “root lift” (no, not the kind that makes houses subside). I ask my hairdresser, Nando, whom I occasionally remember to visit, to explain the craze for hair extensions. He tells me that for a woman who’s had thin hair all her life, they can be a dream come true – like a breast enlargement only without the bloodshed. But that raises a lot of questions. What is the dream of big hair about? Why this desire for our faces to be haloed like a Renaissance saint?