Land of the red haired women

When the temperature goes up outside, people do all they can to keep cool. Romans shed their clothes with alacrity. For the women the hem lines go up and neck lines plunge. The fabrics get lighter and lighter almost to the point of being transparent. Indeed, knicker lines become visible and bras adopt a new not-quite-outer wear status.

Men opt for shorts, logoed T-shirts and flip-flops. And, unless they are civil servants with their obligatory dress code of suit and tie, unfair for the men as women can wear what they want, the casual tie-less look is in.  

Sandals of amazing complexity in a variety of materials some adorned with sparkly stones and beads appear on well-manicured and well-cared for feet. Legs are waxed to the max though strangely armpits may remain hairy.

Women start teasing their long flowing locks onto their heads so as to feel a breeze, when there is one, on their necks.They have a vast array of clips and grips and elastics, some go for headbands and combs, anything that can get their hair off their skin short of actually cutting it.

I go to my hairdresser. My first visit to a hairdresser in Italy was a disaster. I didn't speak enough Italian to convey what it was I wanted. In the event I got a short cut but with an alarmingly pouffy blow dry which left me with a dandelion-like puff atop. Even worse I was on the way to work so I couldn't go home and shower it to more reasonable proportions. I spent the lesson watching a student stuff his mouth with a hanky every time mirth almost over-powered him. The other students were wreathed in large smiles.

Though thinking about it, maybe it had nothing to do with a failure to communicate. A few years later, one of the sales staff at a school I worked at, returned from his lunch break with the most startling of blow dries. His hair had been puffed up and swept back into wings along the side of his head and then sprayed into place. Had he been a model just about to saunter down the catwalk no one would have blinked. He was a middle-aged sales rep. He got a lot of smiles that day.

Nowadays I stick to the same hairdresser for as long as I can. The better to get to know the staff. For many years I went to a small place in a road that led off Campo dei Fiori to Piazza Farnese. It was a French franchise operation, appropriately enough as Piazza Farnese is home to the French embassy. Then the owners ditched the franchise and went rogue with a subsequent hike in prices which saw me abandon them with regret. 

I transfered to a similar franchise operation on the Via Tuscolana just two metro stops up from where I work. 

With some trepidation as I walk in today, I note that the woman who usually cuts my hair isn't there, instead a young man with heavily tatooed arms takes over. I point to the photo of the way-prettier-model than me who sports the cut I want. But as I'm waiting, I flick through the brochure of cuts. I point at another photo.

"That's very short," the young man cautions, "especially at the back."

I nod, "Go for it."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. It'll grow back anyway." And in a re-enactment of Edward Scissorhands he cuts and cuts and cuts. Snippets float around the air and down my gown, whiter and greyer than I would like but I dislike dyes. More accurately, I dislike the smell of most products used in commercial dyes.

This of course has prompted comments along the lines of:

"You're so courageous."

"I could never let myself go grey like you."

"It's a good thing you have short hair. Long grey hair is so sad" 

"It suits you but it's not for me." etc.....

When it comes to personal comments, even inappropriate ones, Italian women are no wall flowers. Though in many ways their comments reflect their own insecurities.

In turn I observe their red-dyed shag piles, sleek bobs, layered locks and tumbling ringlets, varying in colour from the scariest gingers to coppers, burgundies, auburns and cherries, rubies, intense reds, violets, titians and magentas. Why red? Is it because it is a 'passionate' colour, the colour of love but also the colour of war? 

Last year every morning when I went to the dog park to see if Mia, a black Labrador had arrived I would look through the foliage for the intense red glow of her owner Grazia's hair. The mother-in-law of the custodian to my building with her ever thining locks goes about in bright orange while the custodian herself dances from auburn to magenta as the seasons pass.,And if they haven't dyed it a shade of red then there'll be a red highlight or red tips. 

It has nothing to with age as I've seen this colour on women from 18 to 80. In fact 60% of women in Italy tint their hair. 

A colleague of mine expressed some alarm when she came to Rome for the first time in 1998. "All the women had red hair. What was that about? I felt like I'd landed on another planet, in the land of red-haired women. Everywhere I turned I saw red!"

The years have passed but the affection of Italian, or is it just Roman ?, women for red goes on. Personally, I'll stick to my shade of grey. For now.