I'm undaunted in my quest to amuse myself by constantly changing my hair - Hilary Clinton

A reminder popped up on my screen yesterday that read, cryptically, ‘Forget it. You’ll be sorry—just like last time.’ My first thought was that some finger-waggling hacker with nothing better to do had been playing in my calendar, but then it dawned on me that I had written this little note to myself a year ago, cleverly predicting exactly when I’d get the itch to make a radical change to my mop.

For half my life since high school, I’ve had variations of the same, classic bob—a style that undeniably works best for my hair type but looks, well, boring. Not to mention unoriginal. What I really want is a drop-dead gorgeous hairdo—I’m thinking Victoria Beckham—that can be washed in thirty seconds and styled in under two minutes. And therein lies the rub, because the only style with a hope of meeting those conditions is a very short cut and there are two reasons why that doesn’t work for me.

The first one alone should give me sufficient pause that I don’t even need to call up the second. I’m tall—so tall that I only rarely encounter anyone at my eye level. Even men. The second reason is that I do not have an abundance of hair, and what I do have is fine. The way it works is this: the taller one is, the more proportion matters, and the sum of tall plus short and fine adds up to pinhead, which is not a look I care for overmuch. But even if I was five foot nothing, the fact remains that my hair, when released of the ballast that a bit of length gives it, refuses to adhere to a part of any location and falls straight forward. No matter how good the original styling was, I end up with second cousin to a bowl cut unless I spend at least half an hour and $15 worth of product on it.

Not everybody frets so much about their hair, for sure. There are people out there in shopping malls and public libraries who don’t struggle with angst about whether their locks look good. Or even clean! But I’m stuck with my preoccupation and am pretty sure I can blame my mother for it. She used to roll a mean chignon and wouldn’t dream of leaving the bathroom less than fully coiffed.

I’ve been around the block a few times, so to speak—the hairdresser’s equivalent of a serial monogamist. My fruitless search for the ideal style has driven me into the hands of countless cutters, but put an end to some promising relationships because there’s just no way to hide the evidence of my infidelity.

To be honest, I’ve only ever had one really awful experience—the time I decided, on a whim, to get my hair cut in a salon near Paris, with the wrong-headed assumption that if the coiffeur is French, ergo, he must be good. Jean-Jacques gave me a two-for one ‘do—short on one side and then angled irregularly to finish about three inches lower on the other. Language difficulties might have been a factor but who knew that behind J-J’s mild expression lurked a punk mentality?? Not since my mother cut my bangs within an inch of my hairline had I cried myself to sleep over the way my hair looked.

For those of us who came of age during the feminist movement at its most ferocious, hair talk made us skittish; it was way too girly and unworthy of our status as strong-women-to-be-taken-seriously. But in recent years, the move to public, full-frontal transparency has meant that women can now admit to their deep dissatisfaction with their hair, and some have even spoken openly about their most secret fantasies. Turns out that having a post-grad degree in theoretical physics and being able to do your own plumbing does not preclude believing in fairy tales. Well, one, anyway, and it goes like this: Somewhere out there is the perfect haircut, one so flattering, so easy to manage, so totally ME... that I will be unequivocally happy with it!! This is on a par with believing that the Mafia is a charitable foundation.

All this openness has helped me a lot. It’s a relief to know I’m not the only one who struggles with delusional thinking, and I am fully aware that I may have to protect myself from me with ‘don’t-mess-with-it’ warnings. But despite all that, I have a sinking feeling that history may repeat itself, even though between now and my appointment with the new guy next week, I’ll give myself every possible reason to keep the status quo.

I can see it all now. He’ll take a long, discomfiting look at me from all sides, run his fingers knowingly through my tired bob (it’s taken a whole year to get back to one length), and then suggest—without actually saying it in so many words—that with some layering here and some choppy stuff there, he’ll make me look fabulous.

And that reminder? Maybe I'll pay closer attention next year.