Kelly-Rose Bradford: Hair's the news - Boy's not facing the cut

Jun 23 2009 Surrey Herald

I never thought I would be having to deal with 'appearance' issues with Boy while he is just six years old.

But I am. It was gently suggested recently that he should have his hair cut. Now, Boy's hair is of flowing, Samson-like proportions.

It is also very thick, wavy and abundant and, to look smooth and shiny and sleek, needs careful blow drying and lots of TLC. Which most of the time it gets.

Admittedly, when it doesn't, it does bear a passing resemblance to a very woolly sheep nestling in a haystack, but on the whole, it is long and flowing and lush.

Boy loves his long hair and has never known it any other way - he has never had short hair in his life, apart from when he was born, obviously, and is as reluctant as I am to cut it off.

He has been trimmed and preened at various salons and been awarded certificates and lollipops for his patience and good behaviour, but the resulting chop has always been millimetres rather than centimetres, and a shoulder-length cascade of layers rather than a crew cut.

But for the past six summers we've weathered comments such as 'he'll get too hot with all that hair' (yes, and he'd get a whole lot hotter without it...) and 'people will think he is a little girl' (yes, they do, but hey ho, if they can't work out that in combats, baseball boots and a T-shirt with

Ben 10 on it that he's probably male, then that's their problem) to the ridiculous, but faintly amusing 'he'll get nits' or 'it'll get caught in something and he'll have an accident', through to the perplexing 'someone will do something to it'.

Ah, yes. Just like every stick will undoubtedly have your eye out, long hair on males will result in entanglement in swimming pool filters, random attacks from hair arsonists and a prevalence of unsavoury infestations.

Obviously none of these things will ever happen to girls with hair of the same length.

Touch wood, none of them have so far happened to him (or me, and I've had hair at varying degrees of below shoulder-length to waist-length all my life).

Obviously hair extremities are one of those rites of passage every youngster goes through (though probably not often at six and with parental blessing) and whole swathes of youths have been defined by hairstyles for decades.

As both my brother and I staged our own hair protests throughout our formative years, I suppose I am a little more relaxed than some about the length and breadth of my own son's chosen 'do.

My only rule is that it is clean and starts the day relatively tidy.

And with that in mind, all the while he loves his long swishy hair, it stays. And grows ever more abundant.