Sometimes I forget I have purple hair.

I get confused by the peculiar looks I’m receiving in supermarkets, on public transport, in restaurants and bars, or in the pool at the Subtropical Swimming Paradise in Center Parcs. It’s pretty disconcerting until I remember the probable cause, and my anxiety abates.

Of course, the potential downside is that if people start staring at me for any other reason – perhaps I’m covered in bird poo, or my son has set himself on fire – there’s a risk I may mistakenly attribute their interest to my purple mop.

My hair seems to have attracted a lot of client attention this week. It is evidently more luminous (and more purple) following my recent hairdressing appointment. But it’s generally a topic that comes up frequently at work – with some clients it’s become the default way of starting each meeting. And as far as I can tell, my hair seems to be quite popular within the startup tech ecosystem. Either that or there are a lot of liars in the startup tech ecosystem.

Anyway, I thought it would be a good idea to say a few words on the subject, addressing a few of the recent enquiries as well as giving me a handy weblink that I can share with people should this attention persist.

When clients ask me about my hair, I have a variety of stock answers. It’s very popular with the young children in my close family. It makes me more memorable than the average marcomms expert in our remote working culture of endless Zoom and Teams meetings, where faces are, sadly, all the more forgettable. A colleague of mine recently responded on my behalf, explaining that my hair was likely a response to years of working for very serious corporate PR agencies. And there’s an element of truth in all these things.

Where people have a harder time is reconciling my hair choices with my dislike of attention.

It has been suggested on many occasions that the latter statement cannot possibly be accurate based on my appearance. The accusation has even been levelled at me that I’ve deliberately made myself as conspicuous as possible because it gives me something to grumble about when people inevitably stare (and I do enjoy a good grumble).

I have no wish to address this perceived contradiction. We are all full of such inconsistencies, incongruities and other words hastily pulled from my thesaurus.

Indeed, it seems contradictory to simultaneously hold the subjective belief that one’s haircut is terrific while also acknowledging that, objectively speaking, it’s terrible. We think we look great even though, deep down, we know that precious few others are likely to agree with us.

This probably isn’t true across the board. I’m sure plenty of people would be genuinely mortified to discover that everyone thought they looked ridiculous.

But it strikes me as the right approach to take. Ultimately, it’s all a question of status, and status is complex, context-dependent and ever-changing. I value my self-perceived ‘outsider’ status. The worst thing of all would be to wake up tomorrow and find everyone in the world sporting long, luminous purple hair.

Photo by Álvaro Bernal on Unsplash