Hair's the thing...

Even before I began to immerse myself in this whole beauty caper, my hair was close to my heart.

I had my first really great haircut (that wasn't a pathetic trim) when I was about thirteen and pretty much never looked back. Since that time the net movement of my hair has been blonder and shorter with varying degrees of extremity. Fringes have come and gone, I've been highlighted, tinted, painted, panelled and scissored to within an inch of my jaw and loved every second. My last haircut was my shortest and I loved running my hand over the shorn-short back of my head; not because it felt like boy hair, honest. Beauty girls and magazine ladies, though, seem in general to go for long hair (mimicking models?) and now I find myself coveting the same.

Having just watched the pilot of Gossip Girl on a low down the pecking order channel named itv2, my lust for long tresses continues. The things I like about long hair are that it's youthful, feminine, pretty, expensive, smacks of high-maintenance and men like it - all of these reasons suggest why every female character in the (Cruel Intentions meets MySpace in Manhattan) show sports a glossy long mane. The things I don't like about long hair are that it's boring, unimaginative, safe, high maintenance and it freaks some men out. [I speak for men but I don't know men. Meh, I speak for hair but I don't know hair. Natch.]

Even short hair's got boring, though. Aggy D saw to that, and was joined by Michelle Williams and Anja Rubik. Grazia sealed the deal when they named the haircut du jour the 'shop'. Is it the only word in their vocabulary?

Long or short? Classic or kooky? Only one thing's for sure - my blonde ambition.