Is there anyone – anyone in the world – who procrastinates more than someone who has medium-length hair but can’t decide whether to cut it or grow it out? Climbing Jeepers.
It’s like a curse!
Catch me with my hair at any length that ends between jawline and shoulder and I’m the biggest bore in the world, debating the pros and cons of wearing my hair shorter (“it just looks so good when are formed!”) or more. (“It needs minimal styling and I can tie it back!”) and greeting each tip with a look of anguish, as if to say, you just don’t understand my situation.
Because it’s true: people without medium-length hair don’t know how worrying it is to be stuck in the hair purgatory, neither here nor there. Wandering inland of hair. Those who have deliberately chosen a medium length are fine – some people just love that free and easy swing that neither touches the torso nor skims the chin. They are mid-lengths by choice and are not broken with the same constant sense of indecision as mid-lengths that “just go through”.
Because it is, isn’t it? For anyone developing a shorter cut. Or, instead, they experiment with cutting their long hair shorter, but not quite until they commit to a bob. Mid-length is a transitional phase, a waiting room, but one that you have to stay in for so long that you start to wonder if you can’t just skip the trouble and head for the exit to end things. Cut it all out again. Cut into slices. Anything – anything! – but you suffer from middle age boredom.
Read: How to Grow a Bob
Two things: By no means am I calling medium length hair boring, I’m calling the growth phase boring. Second, I realize there are much bigger things to worry about in life, that the entire planet seems to be in doom and gloom mode, and AI is potentially poised to take over the world, but I’ll say it again: those without a middle long hair just doesn’t understand our situation.
We can envision ourselves with long, luscious hair—hair that falls silky to the shoulders and is heavy enough to hang down—but we also flip through photos of ourselves with short, French-girl bobs and mourn the loss of our cool. We’re sorry for the sexy little one who took ten years away and made our necks look long and elegant. The haircut that could turn into a kittenish, choppy look in about eight minutes. The style it looked differentfresh and – pardon the use of that word – sassy.
The growth phase between the jaw and the shoulder forces us medium-lengths to oscillate between our two options almost non-stop – it’s mental torture! How long do we have to wait? Will we wait and then realize that it was all for naught and we should have kept it all short?
It is the corresponding hair of this scene Brave heart where William Wallace leads the nervous army telling them to do it Hold! Hold! Hold the line! He wants them to wait, not charge too soon. He wants their hair to grow a little longer, to have a little patience.
(God, that has to be the worst illustrative example I’ve ever used.)
William Wallace doesn’t want to waste all that prep time, all that agonizing race prep time, suddenly panicking and rushing in all guns blazing. (They didn’t have guns, although I wouldn’t be surprised if they did in the movie – Brave heart it’s not exactly known for its historical accuracy.) If they had moved forward, it would have been like cutting off all their hair before they had a chance to see what it looked like.
No, no. That’s all broken down, that weird little analogy.
All I’m saying is that when you have medium length hair, because you’re growing your hair out shorter, you tend to spend a lot of time wondering which way you want to go with it.
I tell you all this spectacularly useless preamble because last week I had the pleasure of shooting with Sam McKnight again. Sam McKnight MBE; super-hairstylist, creator of iconic looks (he cut Princess Diana’s hair) and one of the most prolific and inspiring hair stylists in the world.
We filmed him styling the ultimate ‘Supermodel Do’, which he delivered my a chance to read him one of my brand new books (it’s OUT, in case you’ve been hiding under a rock – How not to be a Supermodel is available here) and gave him a chance to regale me with some of his amazing stories from back in the day. It was like Jackanory in the studio on Friday, it really was.
But the remarkable part of the conversation was this – and bear in mind that I had gone into the studio feeling less than ecstatic about the length of my hair, wondering if it would be a bit boring to do a supermodel makeover on: when I asked Sam how he cut my hair if he could do anything he liked with it, he just said, “I’d leave it just the way it is.”
Imagine that! One of the world’s greatest hair maestros telling you that your hair length, which you previously thought was a bit of a “wet blanket”, is almost on point! Versatilehe called it. Cool.*
It’s possible he just didn’t want to get his scissors out, of course. Maybe he thought I’d say “go ahead then, cut it short!”. and would have to wearily begin the process of wetting my hair and putting a dress on my shoulders, etc. Somehow, he gave me the smartest answer – who wouldn’t be flattered to be told that their current hairstyle was very simple the best for them?
I don’t care: I’ll take it. At least it will stop my daily conversations – grow it, cut it? – and motivate me to learn some new styles and techniques. Anyway, I managed to get over the insidious Lord Farquaad mid-length stage where the hair sits in a square wedge wedge and makes you look like a medieval lute.
(I wrote a post about smart hair growth tips on my site hereis one of the posts I need to move to Substack for easier reference.)
And so: I think I may be in a rare truce with my never-right hair. And I have Sam to thank for this new middle life. Maybe really a.m in the sweet spot – could it be… perfect? Because I can tie my hair back but also give it shape and bounce if I curl it but also make it look long and sleek if I straighten it?
I was about six weeks away from getting it cut again, but maybe when I go to my next appointment I’ll just say:
“A little pampering.”
You can watch Sam create the ultimate glamorous mid-length style in our Youtube video here.
*I can’t promise he said the nice part, I had to think of another word for the sake of pacing and flow.
