Saturday 19 February 2011

Pam Ayres with Stubble

I've just had a haircut

...and for the first time in ages I look fairly normal and presentable as someone who wouldn't be pointed and laughed at in the street. It won't last.

My hair has always been a constant source of embarrassment for me. It is 'Uninteresting Brown' and straight and thick and dull and I've never been able to do anything remotely good or interesting or stylish with it. I am a 70s child and it hasn't really changed much from the pudding bowl haircut I sported when I was 5. I don't have any photographs of me as a child but imagine a bucktoothed, flared-nostrilled little geek with a pathetic, sad eyed expression, a Beatles haircut, a Scooby Doo T-shirt, grey school trousers and inexplicably, a pair of ladies fluffy slippers.

By the time of Secondary school when other children had become fashion-conscious, I tried to change my appearance by giving myself a centre parting. It was proper overgrown 80s hair and I was dubbed 'Heart-Head' Not the worst insult ever, thankfully, because everyone at my school was as thick as shit.

Over the years I have tended to think of my hairstyle as:

The 'Dougal' Look. (from The Magic Roundabout)
Two haystacks trying to mate.
Geoffrey from Rainbow's irritating little brother.
PamAyres/PurdeyfromAvengers/Blackadderseries1
OR - Sticking my head into a Cloud of Shit.

The alternative- me having close-cropped 'Skinhead' hair is far too hideous to contemplate and it would probably only draw attention to my moon face, pig snout, deep set Neanderthal eyes and freakishly long forehead.

Hair is horrible, hideous, embarrassing stuff. Not just head hair, of course. At school I was an an early developer and the double whammy of being crap at PE coupled with having to wear tiny flimsy white shorts which showed off my hairy 'Gorilla Legs' marked me down as being an outsider from the start.

I hated it - it was taking over my body and I wanted it to stop. I would trim my armpit hair, pubic hair and take a disposable razor and wet-shave the hairs growing everywhere else. The itchiness of my arse-hair regrowing back- thicker and hairier than before is something I'll never forget. And so the hair carried on, spreading like an unstoppable deadly fungus from a B-Movie.... up across my stomach, sprouting out from my chest... creeping over the shoulders... (Mercifully so far stopping short of taking over my back, thank goodness).

I fucking hate having to shave. I'm sure I would sooner have periods. I am VERY VERY stubbly, with thick black chin hair like cables. I could grow a 5 o clock shadow by about noon. It hurts, even with an electric shaver. Especially around the neck. Many a time I've had a Half Shave- worn out by the pain of trying the shave my face that I've had to stop- and I've left the neck hair for an hour or so like some Hair Scarf. If Hair Scarves ever caught on, I could grow a pretty thick one in about 3 days. I blame it on having far too much testicleosterone or whatever it's called.

Why can't your body get the message that just like yesterday and the day before that and the day before that and the day before that... I DON'T WANT A HAIRY FACE! STOP IT! MAKE IT GO AWAY! Make some more muscle or blood cells or a penis extension or something more useful FFS. I'd like to point out that I don't want any nose hair or ear hair or whacking great eyebrows, either, before it gets any ideas.

And now, since last year, I have a whole New Hair Embarrassment. It all started when I had my chest shaved as part of a series of tests before I had a foot operation. The nurse shaved a big crop circle on my chest- which looked silly enough whilst it was bare flesh- but then it began to grow back WHITE . 'Oh great' I thought 'I'm turning into a Polar Bear' ... but now the white hair has began to spread....

...and I now have white hair from my shoulders to my nipples and black hair all the way down from there. Naked, I looking like a fucking Pint of Guinness. : (





1 comment:

  1. You are brilliant. Even if you do look like you're sporting a body-hair 'Cruella De Ville'.

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