‘Have the vaccine, get great hair’
What could be the cause of Trudy’s new hair growth? Vaccine, menopause, something else? By Christine Manby
Finally, a haircut. After six weeks of daily chats with an answerphone, I got through to my hairdresser Emily last Wednesday. She had a space in her extremely busy schedule that very afternoon. “Otherwise, I can’t fit you in until July,” she said. I dropped everything and made a dash for the salon. I wasn’t going to make the mistake I made at the beginning of December, when I thought it would be safe to book an appointment for the week before Christmas. Who would have believed back then that we were about to plunge into a long winter of hairdresser-free hell? If lockdown has taught me anything, it’s that she who hesitates better be able to cut her own fringe. I will never again pass up the opportunity for a cut and blow-dry. Who knows if July will even happen this year?
Settling down in Emily’s chair, I faced the reality of five months without professional grooming. Zoom has made experts of all of us when it comes to lighting and flattering angles but there’s only so much a ring light and stacking your laptop on the sourdough cookbooks can do. Around the beginning of this year, I started to be increasingly distracted by the lines on my face when I saw myself on screen. Especially if I was Zooming with Saskia, proprietor of #Yne, who has an unnaturally smooth forehead even for a 27-year-old. She puts it down to a healthy diet, lots of exercise and thinking only good thoughts. The latter being something I find particularly hard, as the #Yne Post-It fiasco underlined.
In any case, there’s only so much diet and exercise you can do once you reach your late forties. Last month, I had a conversation with my best friend Liz about “tweakments”. Was it time to get fillers at last? We both agreed we were too frightened of something going wrong.
“I’ve been trying collagen though,” Liz admitted. “Sachets. You drink one every morning. The taste is like licking the bottom of a bin but the testimonials on the site are amazing.”
She directed me to a website full of people who claimed a daily dose of collagen had changed their lives. “Everyone asks me what I’ve had done!” said one woman, who had posted before and after photos. In the first she looked 53. In the second, 52 and a half. I suspected a filter.
“These people giving rave reviews are all the company owner’s mates,” I said. “You don’t need to work in PR to know that.”
“I think my nails are stronger,” Liz insisted. “And the lines around my eyes are a tiny bit less noticeable. Apparently it takes three months for the full effect.”
Three months at 50 quid a pop. Still, it was cheaper than injectables and I trusted Liz’s testimonial if not that of Sue, 63, who claimed she could now pass for 40. I sent off for a month’s supply. Liz wasn’t kidding about that bin-bottom tang.
Back in the salon, Emily was doing that hairdresser thing of lifting up sections of the back of my hair while pulling a critical face.
“More greys?” I asked.
“No more than last time. Looks like you’ve got some new growth around your hairline though, where it was getting patchy.”
“What?” I exclaimed. On both counts.
“See where your sideburns are,” she elaborated.
My sideburns? Turning my head slightly to the left, I noticed a new downy sheen.
“Have you changed something about your diet?” Emily asked.
“I’ve been taking collagen,” I said. “For a week.”
“Doesn’t usually work that quickly. What else is different? HRT?”
I struggled to find the words. “I’m not quite there yet.”
Emily continued: “My mum and her mates have got this new game. Every time they feel a bit weird, they ask ‘menopause or vaccine’? You’re old enough to have had the vaccine, right?”
While Emily combed out my knots, I googled “Covid vaccine hair”. I found nothing to suggest that the vaccine might be responsible for the downy regrowth around my hairline, unless it counted as “unwanted male pattern hair growth”. There were several people posting on that subject. I surreptitiously checked for any sign of extra fluff on my upper lip and chin.
Were those three hairs I could feel the usual three, that are absolutely invisible until they are a centimetre long, at which point I inevitably spot them in the mirror in the ladies’ at a fancy restaurant where I am enjoying dinner with someone who might have turned into a romantic prospect? If I’ve been feeling especially good about how I look, all three chin hairs will pop up at once, the whiskery equivalent of the slave whose job was to whisper to the Roman emperors “remember you’re just a man”. My chin hairs are there to say: “Remember you’re not Liz Hurley.”
I joked with Emily. “That would be a great way to overcome anti-vax sentiment, wouldn’t it? Have the vaccine, get great hair. Though I should probably wait to see if my eyebrows join up first.”
Emily peered at my reflection. “I think the threading place is open.”
That was it. I told Emily to give me a fringe, thereby concealing my forehead lines and any untoward eyebrow growth with one cut.
On my way home, I bumped into Brenda, who was on her way back from having her second jab.
“I did an eight-mile run this morning,” she said. “In case I don’t feel like it tomorrow.”
She looked at me quizzically then.
“Have you done something to your face?”
“Just my hair,” I assured her. “New fringe.”
“Oh, yes. I see that now. Makes you look like what’s-her-face. Joanna Lumley. In the seventies.”
Well, that wasn’t entirely awful.
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“No. I’m thinking of the wrong actress. I meant Penelope Keith.”
I was very glad to see Glenn the postie, bearing a jiffy bag containing documents from my Tory goddaughter Caroline.
“This looks urgent,” I said, taking the heavy envelope and using it as an excuse to run inside. Caroline’s missive remained unopened while I googled “Penelope Keith”. Then I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror for a while. I was definitely looking fluffier around the temples. Vaccine or menopause?
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