I’m really lazy about getting my hair cut. It’s long enough and I do so little with it that I can get away with going only every 12 weeks. Well, it’s been about that long, and I had the opportunity to try a new stylist that a friend of mine swears by, so I went on Saturday.

I was thumbing through the latest Esquire when I saw Rachel Hunter has been added to the list of Esquire’s Women We Love.  The theme of the article was how she and a number of other incredibly beautiful women turn 39 this year, and how women, much like history itself, have their own fin de siècle.  Hunter, like contemporaries they listed (Zeta-Jones, Aniston, Blanchett, Turlington) is "burning brighter than ever".

I stared in the mirror as Sara the stylist combed through my wet hair.  I commented that I have pulled a few strands of gray recently, and I was terrified at the thought of having to put any color into my pristine follicles.  She shook her head and said, "Don’t worry about putting any color in it, you won't need it for quite a while."  I glanced back down again at the article, the picture of Hunter staring back at me, sheer panties, vampy stilettos, the perfect body & those smoky, mysterious, haunting eyes.    Of course this is the kind of picture that makes the average suburban soccer mom cringe.  It’s one thing to be 24 with pre-child breasts and  zero stretch marks, but 39?

Sara broke my trance by asking how I style my hair.  I replied that I let it air dry and use a shine spray on it when I flat iron it.  "So you don’t put any other product in it?"  "Nothing but shampoo & conditioner, no."  The premise of the article was how 39 is not the end of the beginning, but rather a fin de degeneration.   This year celebrates  the  fin de girlness, fin de immaturity  and replaces it with a renaissance of hottitude.  Ok.  If you’re Rachel Hunter, I can appreciate being 39 and having hottitude, but hottitude in between piano lessons, hockey practice & homework?  Is there hottitude in suburbia or does it get lost somewhere amidst the shopping malls & grocery-getters disguised as luxury SUV’s...?  Sara was blowing my hair dry & ironing it, using 3 or 4 different products that made it sit not quite as smooth as when I do it myself, but still pretty.  My freshly cut bangs hid my eyes just slightly.

I caught a glance from my fiancé as Sara turned the chair around for my full inspection of her work.  There are looks that I wish one could capture into some onomatopoetic term, but for this there are none.  For whatever reason, I felt as though I could have been sprawled across the pages of that magazine from that look.  "We can touch up your makeup before you go, " Sara said.  "That’s ok," I replied, "I’m not wearing any."  As I looked back up at myself & shook out my new haircut, I decided that it’s ok to not quite have my ribs show if I were to ever pose in sheer panties.  Because at 37,  I can count on one hand the number of beauty products I put on my face every day.  I am surprised (though admittedly pissed) when I find a gray hair.  And even on a gloomy, March Saturday, clad in an argyle cardigan & jeans, and this man thinks of me as having hottitude even at 37.  I’ll let you know if I’m willing to try the sheer panties & stilettos for my 39th, somehow it doesn’t feel so unreasonable anymore...