Dual-purpose

    It is now nearly nine months since I last had my hair cut in a male buzz-cut and just over seven months since I had the Long Chat with my hairdresser and started having my hair cut with a view to growing it out into a style suitable for both male and female presentation. In that time I've had it thinned and trimmed on alternate visits to my hairdresser, and though it has only gained a few inches in overall length I now have enough hair to cover my ears and reach down my neck, and I have the beginnings of the same wave that both my sister and mother have in their hair. Over a year on Finasteride has also in a small way reversed some of my hair loss, so fortunately I have little to worry about in the hairline department.

    In short, I think after today's very light trim I'm almost at the point of having a dual-purpose haircut.

    Being a bloke is an easy look to cultivate. You don't bother to dry your hair properly, you tuck it behind your ears and use a little bit of styling wax on top to give it a bit of body if it looks too slicked down. You're expected to look a bit scruffy, so as long as you do just that nobody bothers to look at how your hair is cut behind the facade.
    If I brush it out from behind my ears from this blokish start I can see where I'm going with it but something isn't right. Too flat, I just look like a bloke with a really bad haircut.
    So what's to be done? Wait for more length? Not a bit of it! I am now at the point at which if I blow-dry my hair, instead of looking uncontrolled as it would have in months past it settles in that pleasingly fluffy texture and stays where I put it. Five minutes with the hairdryer and when I look in the mirror I suddenly have a female hairstyle. The sides cover my ears and curl in towards my eyes, while behind my ears and on my neck the wave gives it an outwards curl. And the body given by the blow-drying gives it substance, bounce even.

    Pleased? I should say so!

    My most important critic, my wife, also rates it as a success. And she would not deliver such a verdict lightly. It's a short female haircut and there is room for improvement (the word she used for it was "retro"), but she voted it acceptable to wear to my support group meeting later in the month.
    I am like a teenage girl who has just discovered a grown-up look.