Forget wearing your heart on your sleeve. It's your hair that reveals what you're really like - as everything from our social status to mental health can be decided from our locks alone.
Is your hair glossy and expensive-looking like Kate Middleton's? You must be wealthy enough to afford a professional blow-dry. Have a fringe like Zooey Deschanel? You're sooooo adorkable! Shaved head a la Britney Spears circa 2007? You must be having some sort of crisis, right?
GLAMOUR.com has been gripped by hair politics after reading the ghd diaries of Elizabeth Day in The Guardian. When she went cold turkey from the straighteners, the result was surprising: "Some were almost affronted that I'd been hiding my curls from them for so long, as though I'd been leading a follicular double life," Day observes.
Others however thought her curls made her look "a bit zany" - showing that hair, rightly or wrongly, can be shorthand for a personality type. Wavy = natural, extensions = fake, short hair = masculine, tight ponytail = chav, unusual colour = hipster.
We often reinforce these stereotypes on ourselves, too: "If I leave my hair to be messy, I feel messy", says GLAMOUR.com's Hannah Lyons Powell. "I definitely feel more together if I straighten my hair."
Straight hair has been the female ideal for years now, but the tide against poker-straight tresses is turning, with curls, crops and dip dyes back in fashion.
"People used to embrace having the same haircut as Jennifer Aniston. Now there are 20 or 30 new trends, and individuality is so much more important," hair guru and award-winning stylist Luke Hersheson told Day.
So go ahead, wear that heart on your sleeve OR your hair. Straighteners, optional. We won't judge.
