We are our hair

Whoa, I said to myself as I looked at Christie Blatchford's new hairdo in her byline photo.  I have known Blatchford for 44 years, but she doesn't know I know her, of course. 

Working at Maclean-Hunter in the early seventies, I chaired a conference -- why I don't know because I was about "12" -- and asked her to participate in a panel discussion entitled, "Why Women do it Better".  I was referring to getting the intimate, gritty interview that Blatchford always secured back then and still does.  She talked about getting people to confide in her -- especially men -- and I could relate to that.  Although I worked in the business press section of M-H, I did manage to get some pretty good interviews with industry leaders and I wrote a few decent features.  Was it gender tension on the part of my male subjects who might have been attracted to a young woman such as I?  I don't know, but I used it shamelessly to my advantage because women had so many professional disadvantages at the time.  If you watch 'Mad Men', that was M-H when I worked there.     

Thus, I have followed Christie for many, many years.  She's still in the game, I opted to go over to the "dark" side to make more money in private sector PR.  Eventually I moved back to Ottawa (marital stuff) and became a speech writer for many politicians and Ministers of the Crown.  Didn't care about politics, just give me the money and I'd write for anyone. 

Christie has been wasting her talent for the past few years covering criminal trials, but she is in Sochi and has written some pretty good human interest pieces.  She always takes an odd angle and gets at the personalities of the players.  But I focussed on her new hairdo the other day.  I hate it.  It's a flat black bob -- never flattering when you are our age.  What is she thinking?  She does not seem to be aging gracefully, in my never-to-be-humble opinion. 

As I have always maintained, good, bad or ugly, women are their hair.