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Hair styles can be fun and fashionable, but experts say they also send a message about your identity to others

Date published: 7/14/2006

By KIM BAER

DO YOU TRULY believe you're a natural blonde, even though you faithfully dye every six weeks?

Have you clipped a photo of Katharine McPhee for your stylist? Used your camera phone to snap an image of a stranger's cute cut?

You might think these hair decisions are all about fashion. You'd be wrong. Your hair says more about you than you might think.

Let's face it. Hair is the first thing you notice about a woman, said Bruce Inglis, owner of Salono Salono in downtown Fredericksburg.

"It's the ultimate statement of beauty," he said.

Hair that's healthy and shiny can make someone look and feel younger. A stagnant style, on the other hand, shows age. He heard a scary statistic recently: 80 percent of women haven't changed their hairstyle since high school. Women should tweak their hairstyles every six months. That will help keep their styles current.

"If you feel like your hair looks good, it's a good psychological boost," Inglis said.

Unfortunately, most are disappointed in their own hair. A 2003 Pantene survey found that 84 percent of women wish they could improve their hair's appearance.

But hairstyles are about more than fashion, according to experts. Most obviously, we use hair to show our gender, said Miriam Liss, a psychology professor at the University of Mary Washington.

"Parents of young babies will even put bows or barrettes in their practically bald little girl's head to mark them as a girl," Liss wrote in an e-mail.

Men typically have short hair, women long hair. It is acceptable for women to sport a short style because that is imitating the more powerful male ideal, Liss wrote.

Men aren't immune to hair concerns. Christina Samora-Nixon said more and more men are coloring their hair, for instance. The time and attention many men with thinning hair will spend on their comb-over is also telling. Healthy, full hair signals youth. And youth is important in our culture.

It's still considered "subversive" for men to grow their hair long because they are "acting like the social group that has less power," Liss wrote.

There's even been a book written about women's fascination with hair, called "Rapunzel's Daughters: What Women's Hair tells us about Women's Lives."

Date published: 7/14/2006