I have for many years coveted long, straight hair worthy of a slow motion whip around to camera. I did try once in 1984 with my best friend KB. I think we got as far as laying my head on the ironing board with a piece of baking paper. The Afro gods intervened with a well-timed power shortage. I did eventually get my hair professionally straightened. For the next week, all I did was run my hands through my tamed locks. When I washed my hair the curls instantly returned, waiting as they had been for the alchemic properties of water to bring them back to life.

Hair serves a practical purpose in keeping body parts warm and has an obvious forensic value in linking perpetrators to their crime. Once removed from the body, hair loses its beauty. Anonymous hairs in public sinks? Gross. Throughout Biblical passages, mythology and folklore, hair is used to symbolise human desire, frailty, identity and sexuality. Characters such Samson and Delilah, Goldilocks and Rapunzel are part of our westernised indoctrination into the symbolic value of hair.

I once heard an incredible WWII story about a Jewish couple on the run who made it into safe territory by crossing a fast flowing river. Unable to swim, the woman almost drowned until her desperate husband pulled her across by the hair.

Chris Rock made a wonderful documentary called Good Hair which explores racial politics in America and why many successful women of colour still try to emanate Caucasian beauty by straightening their hair. Indeed the last time I saw Oprah with natural hair was when she was making a somewhat ironic statement about self-empowerment.

And then there’s the gender politics of the barbershop, which I had no idea about until I decided to get an undercut and hoped I might save a bit by going to one. To my surprise I read review after review of male barbers who had either refused to cut a woman’s hair, or had told them not to come back again. In this age of gender fluidity, this seemed like an antiquated response. I went to one of these barber shops. There were two barbers working – both women. I asked one for an undercut, which she hesitantly agreed to.

In the chair, I asked if barbers were reticent to cut women’s hair. She said it was more a question of whether the barber had been trained to do what the female customer was asking for, rather than straight out discrimination. A lot of barbers, she went on to say, weren’t adequately trained to do more than a perfunctory clip and shave. There are a few knots to be untangled in that argument. But as we all know, hair is rarely a cut and dry affair.