Frances Whiting: Greatest hair mystery of all time solved

There are countless mysteries in life and many are about hair. I believe I have just solved one of the biggest ones, writes Frances Whiting.

There are countless mysteries in life, some are enormous; dark matter, the Voynich Manuscript, is Donald Trump hiding Lord Voldemort under his hair? Some are small; the current whereabouts of the world’s 980 billion socks, why orange cremes? But many of them are about hair.

Yes hair - not just Donald’s, and particularly women’s.

And I believe that I may have just solved one of the biggest mysteries surrounding women's hair of all time. It is a two part mystery, so bear with me.

Why do many women, once they hit a certain age, get the same haircut?

This style is all variations on one theme, and that theme is apparently to cleverly hide the hideous crime of growing older.

This haircut uses layers, choppy bits, and long, sweeping fringes designed to cover as much of their hideous, ageing faces as possible.

Now, what follows lies the real mystery.

Why do women, once again at a certain stage, immediately cut off this perfectly serviceable haircut in favour of a very short one?

I’ll tell you why. They are sick of putting their hair up in a ponytail.

There you have it.

Eventually, many women grow tired of waking up, looking at their hair, thinking about spending an hour or so styling it, and then thinking: “Nup, don’t have time, I’ll just whack it in a pony.”

Look around you people, and you will see I am right - thousands and thousands of women with shoulder length hair, and all pulled back into a ponytail.

This is because they cannot be bothered trying to make it look like it did when they first got their choppy cut, or long bob, or whatever it is you wish to call it.

They know they cannot emulate the fabulous way it looked when they left the hairdresser, because they also know deep down in their collective hearts that they will never, ever be able to use the “product” correctly.

You know the “product”? Oh yes you do, girls, because you have bottles and bottles of it in your bathroom drawers, don’t you?

Hairdressers love “product”.

No-one knows what it is, but there is a product for every type of hair. Flyaway hair, fine hair, oily hair, difficult to manage hair, your hair, my hair and here’s the thing. When the hairdresser uses this “product” on your hair at the salon, it is as if Vidal Sassoon himself has descended from the heavens to tend to your tresses with this magical elixir. It is nothing short of a miracle, your hitherto recalcitrant locks are suddenly lush, bouncy and perfect.

But when you get home and try to use that exact same “product” on your hair, it does not do the same thing.

No, it does not. It does, however, look and feel like you have applied little wads of chewing gum to your hair, or perhaps poured a litre of cooking oil onto it.

So, what do you do?

You pull it back in a ponytail, and head out the door until that one day.

That one day when you look at that ponytail, you know you are never going to master the style yourself, you think about the hundreds of thousands of hair elastics you have lost, and then you think “stuff it”.

And that is why, my friends, women have short hair when they are older.

You’re welcome.

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