I’ve had a good chance to really test the limits of my new haircut, now, and things have been going pretty well. Which has led me to ask the question: could this be my perfect style?

Well: yes and no. Perhaps I’m just in the honeymoon phase with my new, shorter hair, but it does seem to be far easier to style. Although therein lies the rub: I hate hair styling. Even plugging in a hair curling tong gives me palpitations: what sort of monstrosity am I going to create on my head this time? I wonder, as my palms become clammy and I frantically search the chest of drawers for the little heatproof glove. (Those bloody gloves! Make them neon pink, please, so that we can easily pick them out when they get accidentally thrown into the sock and knicker drawer!)

So anyway, yes: I love my new haircut when I have “styled” it (method upcoming, I just need to take some photos of the various intricate – highly skilled! – stages, which include tonging, tonging, more tonging and then windmilling my arms to get the blood back into them) but I do slightly miss being able to tie it back when I don’t style it, which is approximately 98% of the time.

Although I must say that having it shorter is sort of forcing me into making an effort. Again, this is a swings and roundabouts scenario, because I have about as much energy as a sloth after an aerobics session and zero spare time. But if I shoehorn a twenty minute styling session into the week then I can pretty much make the waves/texture/volume last for around four or five days by repeatedly dousing my hair in dry shampoo. (Colab, obviously, and I’m still on the Paradise scent, if you’re asking.)  Admittedly I smell like a wet dog by the time I come to wash it, or like someone who has spent the weekend lying in a damp pile of grass cuttings emptied from the lawnmower, but it’s worth it to not have to keep on plugging in the Wand of Doom, which should require the user to at least pass some sort of proficiency test before they are allowed to spend time alone with it…

I’m going to compile an exhaustive list of the pros and cons of shorter hair, so if you have any of your own then please add to the comments section below – anecdotal material always welcome, I do spend quite a long time scrolling through and chuckling to myself when you leave your stories! (I’m rubbish at answering, but that’s because I now spend my spare time trying to put waves into my hair and look polished-yet-dishevelled.)

Here are some of my pros and cons so far:

It doesn’t tie back completely into a bun or ponytail, which is a bit of an arse, considering that I spend my life with it tied back into a bun or ponytail.

However.

When it’s hanging loose, it doesn’t get on my nerves, so I don’t feel as though I need to be constantly tying it back into a bun or ponytail.

It needs product. Whether it’s the length, or the fact that it’s more bleached and therefore a bit frazzlier, if I don’t use any product it sort of looks slightly unfinished. Luckily, the type of product it needs (a tiny slick of grooming cream or a smidgen of oil on the ends) is quick and easy to apply. And I needed those things on my longer hair too, I suppose, it’s just that if I couldn’t be bothered to “do” my longer hair I’d simply tie it back into – yes – a bun or a ponytail.

It’s far easier to tong, wave or curl: there’s simply less of it. Well, not less as in less volume, so it still takes almost as long, but there’s less length to wind around the barrel or roller, so it feels quicker and it’s not such a fiddly task.

Finally – and hurrah for this one – it looks better when I don’t blow dry it. I can’t even tell you how happy it makes me to finally have an excuse not to blow dry my hair. Not that I ever did anyway, but my longer hair admittedly looked far more polished if I’d dried it with some heat – this cut just looks terribly, terribly pedestrian if I try to blow dry it into a uniform bob. Whereas the naturally-dried version frames my face and looks light and lovely, the heat-dried version is heavy and clunky and lacking in all of the beachy vibes that make the cut so perfect.

No doubt I’ll be bored of shorter hair by the autumn and the “growing out” phase will begin (does anyone else have this eternal self-inflicted hair-cut-then-grow-it-out cycle? what is this life?) and so I’m grasping the bull by its horns and doing as much “short hair experimentation” as I can. Wish me luck…

Many thanks, again, to Kat at Josh Wood Atelier for getting me out of a hair rut – you can read more about the cut itself in last week’s Sunday Tittle Tattle.