Covid hair is a thing; during the past year, people have been giving themselves Covid haircuts, dye jobs and ‘styles’ with varying degrees of success. Prior to last January, I had been a redhead for at least 20 years; so much so that one of my son’s told me he didn’t think he could even remember my hair being any other colour. But along came that dang pandemic and a dramatic colour change (whether via ongoing maintenance or something entirely new) seemed ill-advised. So when I had the chance last year between lockdowns to change my colour back to something closer to my natural dark brown, I jumped on that faster than you could say “colour me happy.”

Here we are 6 months later and although the colour of my hair remains basically the same (except of course the steadily growing crop of greys that keep creeping in) it is the length that is now causing me some consternation.

I did something this weekend that I haven’t done in months; literally, months. I dried my hair; like with a blow dryer. Normally I just let it dry naturally thinking that it’s gentler to these long chemically bombarded locks but I thought, hey, let’s actually put some effort into this (while taking up some time too!) and see what we end up with.

Suffice to say I have a new respect for anyone with long hair, and by long I mean longer than chin length. In addition to being red for 2+ decades, I have also consistently kept my hair length between chin and shoulder length at most. It’s now comfortably right in the middle between my shoulder blades and all I can say is “what the great f***!” It takes WAY longer to style (duh), gives a great arm work out (ok that’s the good news) and uses way more product (duh #2). Now you may be asking, “what’s the big deal? You’ve been watching this happen all this time” which is of course true. BUT I have also been defaulting most days to a rotation between low-pony, high-pony, top knot and braids so, no I really haven’t been paying too too much attention.

This is getting out of control now. I am not one of those lucky people with thick, wavy or better yet, curly hair. My hair is fine, straight and lazy (like lay-down-in-the-morning-and-don’t-lift-a-follicle-all-day lazy) so getting it to hold any kind of style when it’s SHORT is challenging enough. When it’s long? I’d have better luck convincing Dolly Parton that she should stop wearing wigs. Not going to happen.

So although my “abundance” of hair is here today, mark my words, it will be gone tomorrow. And by tomorrow I mean as soon as we are out of lockdown and I can get into a salon.

So, like, a couple more months. Ugh!

How are you managing your Covid hair?