Hair's to you

There are so many changes in the world of hair fashion, it is easy to get confused about what is in and what is not. But there does seem to be one simple hair rule that is timeless, that transcends current trends: Whatever MY hair is currently trending toward, it is not in.

Not that my stylist is to blame. She could give me the very latest fashion from New York, and as soon as I reach home, my hair violently rejects its new highbrow pedigree, and goes back to its plebeian roots.

At one of my recent visits, my stylist had just returned from a hair styling show.

"Bangs are definitely in," she reported.

Finally! I thought. I'm "in" with something hair related.

"Yep, with bangs, you've got the French thing going," she said with enthusiasm. I hoped she was not referring to a poodle.

Emboldened by my newfound in-ness, I asked her to cut my hair a certain way on the top. Her face wrinkled in distaste.

"You can't do that," she said. "It'll look too out of date, so...so...so nineties," she concluded.

I felt that it would be an improvement for me, personally, to be only two decades behind in my hair style. But she refused to, as she put it, "put my signature on something like that."

It's a good thing she never sees me outside the salon, with my hairstyle that defies all her hard work and in-ness. She would be crossing out her signature.

Joe thinks I shouldn't try to make my hair do anything it clearly does not want to do. "Just let your hair be itself," he advises.

Despite everything I do to the contrary, that is pretty much what happens anyway.