blogcutter

My hairdresser phoned me yesterday to let me know that my April appointment was not going to happen, but she would ring again once she knew when she was ready to re-open. No surprise there, though it was good to hear that she and her family are all doing OK while staying home together. We didn't talk for long, as I knew she had other customers to call. I have to say that once restrictions do lift, I'll probably feel safer at her home salon, where she usually only serves one customer at a time - two at most - as opposed to in a large commercial hairdressing salon.

I recall my mother being somewhat obsessed with her daughters' hair, always nagging us to make ourselves look a little more "respectable", tonsorially speaking. If we'd just gotten our hair done, she would sometimes grudgingly concede that "It looks nice at the back." But quite honestly, my reasons for colouring my hair when it verged into that grey area were nothing to do with my mother. I guess it's possible I was subliminally influenced by all the TV commercials I saw for Lady Clairol and Grecian Formula, but I think my main motivation was more mercenary and self-interested than that - I needed to be in the job market and didn't want to be seen as too old to hire or promote, regardless of what legislative safeguards might be in place.

By the time I retired, I had a hairdresser I liked - the one who phoned me yesterday - and since I liked how she did my hair, colouring and all, I never saw any reason to ask her to do the "do" any differently. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?

Of course, I could still buy hair colouring for home use during the pandemic, as I used to do many years ago. But instead, I'm looking on this as an opportunity to find out what my natural colour actually IS, decide how I like it, figure out where I want to go from here.

In the grander scheme of things, I'm thinking about how heartbreakingly seriously some authorities and organizations have taken their dress codes and standards for personal appearance throughout history. And I wonder how quickly things are changing during this crisis, as well as how things will evolve once it's over.

Do people working from home still get dressed up in formal business attire before sitting down or standing up or sprawling at their computers, tablets or smartphones? Does it make a difference depending on whether there's a video feed or not? Are there some businesses where it's still jacket and tie for men and skirt-suit, pantyhose and pumps for women? Or maybe some sort of official uniform, even while working remotely?

During the war, silk stockings became scarce and expensive because silk was needed for parachutes. Then they developed nylon and silk stockings became more or less obsolete. Even when I bought my first pair of nylons, they were considerably more expensive, at least in inflation-adjusted dollars, than they are today. Most nylons in the early days had a very visible vertical seam up the back. Women who couldn't afford to keep themselves in nylons (which laddered even more easily in those days) often used to draw fake seams up the back of their legs to give the illusion of being "properly" (again for those days) attired. And of course, there were also the white gloves!

Moving forward a bit, consider school dress codes, which finally loosened up a bit in the late 1960s or early 1970s, for both teachers and students. But there are still issues - or at least there WERE, right up to when schools closed because of the pandemic. Do school uniforms still have a place? What about facial hair and long hair and ponytails on men? What about piercings and tattoos? And perhaps the most contentious issue of all: what about religious symbols like turbans, yarmulkes, hijabs, burqas, niqabs and the like?

When everything is online or otherwise remote and distanced, it's more about your name, rank and serial number - and your SIN, PRI and Superannuation number - than it is about what you look like.