I was going to discuss the President’s photoshopped official photo, but decided instead to discuss her blow dry; this hairstyle is, after all, our national look.
Quick, survey the room you’re in right now: count how many of the women around you have their hair blow-dried poker straight? Possibly, all of them.
Maltese women have a religious dedication to blow dries. If you need confirmation on the matter, switch on television and zap the local channels. The women featuring in drama series mostly have straightened hair, apart from the ones crying “X’biċċa ġratilna!” – those usually have their hair all over the place, which they then try comb with their fingers the minute someone tells them “Iskot! Narawha din!”
Take news anchors: do you ever see one with curly hair? Ruth Amaira is styling hers with a fluffy flick now, but it’s still as straight as ever. All the others have unadventurous straight, mid-back-length kind of hair.
News features? Well, all I’ve been seeing lately were MEP candidates. And I really want to know what Roberta Metsola’s and Miriam Dalli’s hair is actually like. What’s it like when they wake up in the morning? Dalli in particular, because occasionally we get a glimpse of curls on her forehead straining, begging, to come out.
My hairdresser, who is Italian, finds this national obsession very baffling, bless him. When he opened his salon a few years ago he’d have women with long wavy or curly hair queuing every Saturday for their straight ‘come spaghetti’ blow dry.
“It is something unthinkable in Itaally,” he said. “In Itaally, women want a good cut, so they can do the ’air themselves. Here everyboddi wants one length. ’Ow can you?”
Initially he went along with this ritual: the curly-haired ladies would go once a week and he’d duly oblige with a really strenuous blow dry. “Some didn’t even have shampoos at ’ome because I wash it for them. So I tell them, babbene: but on the beach what you do? And they tell me: we wear scarf. But ’ow can you? You go to spiaggia an’ you don’t want to get wet? I don’t understen’.”
He has since persuaded half his customers to ditch the straightened look and has given them manageable layered styles, and shampoos for home. To the other half, who would not let go of their blow dry addiction, he said: “Sorri, forgetaabowtit”.
I have no idea how this mass styling came about. Possibly the ladies think straight hair is an attraction. Most Maltese men I know are infatuated with Kate Middleton’s glossy mane. If they see their mate’s girlfriend suddenly sporting a short, sexy hairstyle, you’ll have them whispering at you from the corners of their mouth: “Don’t you ever contemplate something like that”. But they are mostly concerned about length, not about having hair flat against our faces.
For some reason, we have a psychological need to disguise who we really are
The truth is that our hair is typically Mediterranean: thick and wavy. But we don’t embrace that anymore, instead, for some reason, we have a psychological need to disguise who we really are: deep down we want our hair to be Scandinavian.
Over the past decade, ironed-straight hair has become almost the default style for Maltese women aged 16 up. It starts one fine day when you blow dry it because you have an “okkazjoni”. Then the next day, you look in the mirror and you just want yourself to look neat and boxed again. It helps that now we have more hairdressers than people in every village.
In the grip of our addiction we don’t even care about the damage done to our split ends caused by the steaming 200°C heat, nor about the fact, that essentially we are a photocopy of each other with this expressionless hairstyle, nor do we care about the worry and tension caused by having to keep water at bay. Once a friend of mine fainted at work; when she came to, she wouldn’t let us sponge her face with a wet cloth. “Noo, my hair will frizz hideously if it gets wet,” she hoarsed.
Maybe it’s time to throw away the straightener. And maybe the President, if she’s going to have another official photo taken, should lead by example and show us what her hair is really like. Or at the very least, she could ask her hairdresser for the ‘undone blow dry’ which has a hint of bouncy hair with a dishevelled finish.
I suspect there is something about the lightness of carrying our own hair that would makes us all happier.
Disclaimer: My hair has a nondescript wave that is neither one thing nor the other. I don’t blow dry it anymore these days because I have learnt that leaving your hair natural can be a social mood indicator. If it’s nice and neat – why hello, let’s do lunch; but if it’s ruffled – approach at your own risk. It’s majorly tangled as I write this.
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Twitter: @KrisChetcuti