In years to come, in all the history books covering this horrible, scary time, it will definitely warrant its own chapter.
A hideous side-effect of the pandemic. Yes, given what else is going on you’re lucky if you’re panicking about this. It also sucks.
On one hand, it’s just hair. On the other – as Fleabag said, in the most over-quoted TV show line of all time – HAIR IS EVERYTHING.
Feeling awful is something we’ve become used to these last few weeks, to varying degrees. Looking awful as well is too much.
It’s more loss – of control, routine, confidence - when we’re all, even the least affected, already enduring so much.
And it means that when we finally can socialise with our friends again, we won’t be able to, because we won’t know who they are. We won’t recognise them.
Of course everyone will be at least twice the size they were before, and there will be a lot of new beards – some of them on men – but most confusingly, we’ll all have different colour hair.
And bear in mind that when the salons do eventually re-open, every single one of their customers is going to be desperately scrambling for an appointment at the exact same time. It’s going to be ages before this wrong is
righted highlighted.
Because, somehow, I’m now apparently a wife from a 70s sitcom, I’d been nagging my husband to get a haircut for weeks before All This even started.
His hair is really thick and grows quickly, and at that point he already pretty much had a bob.
At time of writing, it’s a full lob. We’re now in an unspoken battle to see who’ll break first.
The person who initially suggests I try to give him a trim is the one who’ll bear the brunt of the blame when it goes as badly as it is so very clearly going to.
But even when it does, he has a way out.
That’s the other great unfairness of Covid Hair – men can shave their heads, and be done with it. This isn’t an option for women, as most of us are all too aware we’d look much more early 2000s Britney Spears than early 90s Sinead O’Connor.
There’s only one thing that can possibly get us through this. We may be going down – but we’re taking celebrities with us.
They also don’t have access to the people who do their hair – or their faces.
There’s no way out, either. Anyone whose appearance doesn’t disintegrate over the coming weeks will very obviously have broken the rules, so we’ll get the measure of them once and for all.
Glam Shaming is probably just about to become a thing, and in the current climate, would careers really survive it? The stars who have always sworn their youthful appearances are down to drinking water are about to be unmasked, in both senses of the word.
The extensions are about to wither, and die. At the very least, our silver lining will be seeing their silver linings - no matter how far they’ve come in life, now there will be no escaping their roots.
There has been so much talk about coronavirus being the great leveller – mostly quickly and easily debunked as utter nonsense.
But whadda ya know, here’s the one place it really IS an equaliser. We’re all about to look equally terrible.