What woman in her sixties or any other age doesn’t sometimes look in the bathroom mirror during her morning ritual of moisturizer, makeup and hair and think: “I can’t stand the sight of this anymore!”
Are you tired of the same old look and life? Your greatest adventure is changing your mascara from black to brown because it looks better, or breaking out with a new nude lipstick.
That’s how I felt as I went through the same boring ceremony that many women go through every morning, staring into each other’s eyes with their bare faces and thinking: Where did it all go? Do I really look like that?
Twice a week, I also tamed and straightened my curly hair with a half-hour blow-dry and curlers, giving it the same look I’ve had for 20 years and which a friend unkindly calls my “helmet hairstyle.”
Amanda Platell wore the same straightened blowout hairstyle for 20 years before deciding to get the haircut
And yet I can hardly remember the younger woman who chose the “look” that defined me for decades. Now, at 66, I longed for a change. I asked myself what I could do. Find a new boyfriend? Complicated. Move? I love my battered old house. Quit my job, look for a new job? Unthinkable. Go blonde? Not with my complexion.
Then suddenly, when I looked in the mirror at my old face and my helmet hairstyle, I had an epiphany – I could get bangs.
Before men with receding hairlines smirk slightly condescendingly at the idea of equating bangs with a new house purchase or a career change, let me tell you that there’s no doubt that a change in hairstyle can change a woman’s life. OK, that’s not exactly earth-shattering, but the point was to take control, even if only in a small way. As you get older, it gets harder to make drastic changes. Glittery eyeshadow only accentuates your wrinkles. Flirty eyeliner looks like desperation.
I’m familiar with Botox and have spent thousands on it over time, but there’s no denying the signs of aging. I’ve also noticed that my forehead looks huge in selfies.
To be sure, I turned to Google and found out that a pony can work at any age.
It’s actually good for your hair. Hormonal changes and lifelong dyeing and blow-drying mean that hair becomes drier and more brittle after the age of 50.
A short cut in the front can create a healthy look and hide telltale signs of age-related damage, such as split ends.
A good fringe compensates for changes that come with age, such as thinning eyebrows, a lifting and softer face
A little more Googling and I found literally dozens of different bangs. According to Glamour, there are at least 15 types of “bangs”—a word I hate—thin, curtain, curly, choppy, side-swept, blunt, long, and layered, to name a few.
Then I looked at pictures of celebrities “before and after bangs”: Taylor Swift, Anne Hathaway, Cameron Diaz, Keira Knightley, Daisy Edgar-Jones. Maybe my over-enthusiasm made me biased, but surely they almost always looked better “after.”
Next, the acid test. I texted my friends to see if they agreed. To my surprise, they all replied positively, with one adding kindly, “For heaven’s sake, get rid of your helmet hairstyle, it’s so old-fashioned.” So, encouraged, I called my stylist Kerry, took a deep breath and said, “I want a big change in my life.”
“A huge change. I can’t go on like this. I want a pony!”
Kerry had known me for 20 years with my helmet hairstyle and initially asked me if I was really ready. But he quickly got on the subject and said: “I’m thinking of Brigitte Bardot.” “She’s 89 years old!” I exclaimed.
No, he meant a young Brigitte: a deep, longer fringe with a soft texture and tapered hair sections around my face. Apparently this “modern Brigitte” is the most popular fringe at the moment, especially for women over 50.
“It softens the face,” he explained, sending me picture after picture. The loose sections around the cheekbones taper down the neck, narrowing the jawline and accentuating the cheekbones. The long bangs lie above the eyebrows to frame and highlight the eyes.
You can wear it lying on your eyebrows or swept to the side. It’s also easy to maintain as it doesn’t need to be blow-dried – or so Kerry claimed.
Call me shallow, but the thought of looking like Brigitte Bardot (even in her 60s) won me over.
Of course, I’m no stranger to bangs. We’ve all had them at least once. As a child, my mother would cut them with a pudding bowl. I had them too in my 20s and early 30s, when my hair was naturally wavy – before decades of coloring and blow-drying destroyed its structure and made it frizzy.
Back then, all my hair needed was a bit of mousse and a few minutes of a diffuser blow-dry to make it nice and mess-free. I look back on those days of carefree hair with great fondness.
Anne Hathaway was one of the celebrities, along with Cameron Diaz, Keira Knightley and Daisy Edgar-Jones, whose looks convinced Amanda to make the change
A modern interpretation of Brigitte Bardot’s style with tapered hair sections around the face is currently the most popular fringe for women over 50.
When Kerry came to cut my hair – he makes home visits to long-term clients – I was still nervous and already regretting my decision.
What if I hated it? My perfectly blow-dried hair was my armor, I protested. He gently suggested that maybe it was time to take off the armor. Who needs a shrink when you have a great hairdresser?
It is worth noting that if you are going through inner turmoil, you may want to take some distance from the scissors.
Bangs are known to be the first choice after a breakup. Many women experiment with a dramatic new look only to regret it later. And bangs can take forever to grow out.
Los Angeles stylist Sal Salcedo says, “Hair is a tool that can reflect social change.”
“A pony can also serve as a physical representation of change.” He adds that ponies experienced a huge surge in popularity after the pandemic.
This all sounds like gibberish to me. And yet psychologists claim there is such a thing as a “stress pony” or “trauma pony” and warn that a pony cannot cure underlying feelings of anxiety and depression. As Kerry says, “I have scissors and a comb, not a magic wand.”
Well, I wasn’t going through a life crisis, nor was I going through a breakup, I was just completely bored with myself and wanted a new look.
To allay my fears, Kerry first cut me a light fringe, a “half-Brigitte”. He divided a triangle of hair about ten centimeters wide and three centimeters deep and then cut it off.
He said the bangs would feel better than my hair did before, as we had to cut off 6 inches of old, brittle, dead hair. I was not reassured. So he patiently explained to me that as we get older, our foreheads rise, our noses grow, and our eyebrows get thinner. Who among us over 60 doesn’t lament the years of eyebrow plucking that have left our eyebrows thin and in need of daily redefinition or even tinting?
A good fringe will compensate for these changes by lifting and softening the face – and it costs just £150, including new colour. Kerry suggested we go lighter as that’s gentler on a more mature face, so I had the full foil treatment, which involved brushing honey blonde highlights through my darker hair and focusing on the area around my face to add more light and make me look younger.
He continued drying my hair and showed me the result: no hard line across my forehead.
I have to admit, it was a bit of a shock for me. I looked so different.
Kerry told me to sleep on it – and assured me that it wouldn’t go crazy and frizzy overnight.
In the morning I combed out my bangs and looked at myself in the mirror. What a difference.
I immediately called Kerry and said, “I want bangs? I want them lower, thicker, messier, I want the full Brigitte.” He arrived promptly with scissors in hand and cut me a deep V that continued back towards my part, with longer strands around my face and neck. I love it.
Freed from the tyranny of having to straighten my helmet hair, I have gained a flattering fringe that hides the signs of aging to a remarkable degree.
But don’t just take my word for it. The Waitrose delivery man who had to check my date of birth because the bags contained wine said: “There’s clearly a mistake on the bill because you can’t be 66, you look ten years younger.”
A neighbor who tried to deliver a misdirected Amazon package said, “What have you done to yourself, you look so much younger? A new friend?”
Another friend, not one for compliments, simply asked in amazement what I had done. Was it more Botox or perhaps fillers?
I answered quite proudly: “No, I only got a fringe.”
