In an effort to distract you from the fact that I have been shockingly blog-lazy recently: Look! Shiny cool movie awesomeness!

[Photo: NYTrotter, license details here]

Hair and sex have always gone together…

…whether it’s werwolf eruptions of alarming masculinity or the equally disturbing bodily baldness of the fashion scene, or the dispute about blondes versus brunettes, or the thorny issue of whether James Bond could ever be played by a fair-haired man. (Do you remember that time before Daniel Craig? It was a serious question…)

And back in the day, your barber was also the chap who asked you in a discreet and deferential manner whether you ‘needed something for the weekend, sir?’ (I don’t know, and dread to ask, whether there was ever a ladies’ equivalent of that question.)

All that aside, there’s the grand, weird tradition of soft-focus clothed pornstar style shots of models in the windows, tastefully Vaselined to give them that 80s shoulder-padded glamour. Apparently, when we get a haircut, the thing we want most of all is to look like a Patrick Nagel poster. Granted, I did at one time desperately want to live in Nagelworld. But people, come on: it must have been the late 80s, early 90s, when my deepest ambitions were to own a katana and sleep with Liv Tyler.

But my local place has now gone too far. They have fallen off the slippery log of ridiculous sexual advertising and deranged drooling over Flashdance styles which were old before I was twenty. They have plunged and pouted their way to a new low of irony-free self-parody. How? Listen closely, and I shall tell you. There are two parts. The first part is relatively simple: they have exposed a nipple. The gauzy, wafty image on the front of the shop now features an unequivocal breast. It’s a very nice example, and no doubt all terribly artistic, but you couldn’t mistake it for anything except a bit of genuine nudity and it’s somewhat startling next to the grocery shop on one side and the cream cake place on the other. I don’t want to sound prudish. I’m a big fan of nipples. I’m just rather surprised to find them casually available beside the kumquats.

And then there’s the second thing. This is where it all goes so very, very wrong. Yes, I know, many would say that the decision to move from pseudo-orgasmic dollfaces to actual bodyparts is already a bridge too far, and I’d have some sympathy for that, especially as the owner of the nipple in question is in that dodgy age/bodymass bracket which invites adjectives like ‘pert’ and ‘budding’. (Ew.) Still and all, it’s what it is, a respectable and indeed elegant and artistic secondary sexual characteristic doing its bit for the sale of hair services. However… I called a friend of mine to discuss the matter – this is what authors do while they’re waiting for agents to read new novels; we fret about public morality and make useless phonecalls to one another – and he had a story to tell.

It would seem, then, that this chap had an urge to get his hair cut on Boxing Day. I find it inexplicable. I think of Boxing Day as a day to be hung over in a genteel, liverish sort of way. It’s a family day, a sleepy day, a day to clear up and wander around and wish desperately for a few hours of kip and a salad. It’s a day to fight over games of Risk or Monopoly. However, he went to get his hair cut. He walked in off the street, a bit bleary-eyed, and said could they cut his hair and they said they could, and it was only as he began to wake up and the stylist was soaping his head that he realised that she – along with all the other women working in the salon – was wearing not a lot more than her underwear and a sort of see-through item around her shoulders.

“Oh, yes,” she said blithely, when asked, “it’s Sexy Underwear Haircut Boxing Day.”

Oh. Er. Good. Carry on.

Dearie, dearie me.

Had to share this with you – the very wonderful Greg McQueen gets his copies of the 100 Stories anthology: