Secrets, frustrations, of hair flair are centuries in the making

It’s a fact we know and it’s a truth we accept: Good hair can make your day.

“There is no pain like trying to get ready in the morning and not being able to do your hair,” says Rachel Weingarten, author of “Hello Gorgeous! Beauty Products in America ‘40s-’60s” (Collectors Press, $14.95, 176 pages) and former makeup artist.

“Yes, there’s war and famine, but we can’t save the world if we just feel really ugly.”

Hair goes beyond vanity and pierces our self-esteem, our individuality — even our politics. It offers commentary on the state of the world and can make or break careers. And the result is a culture of $100 blow-outs, caviar shampoo and $500 haircuts with one-name stylists such as Oribe, Christophe and Fekkai.

“It’s so ingrained, even from when we’re little children, that hair has really mythical properties,” Weingarten says. “In pre-historic times, when there were just stick figures and no representation of clothing, you’ll still find hair on the drawings.”

Your hair and you

Bad hair can haunt you for life. Children who struggle with unruly hair may not come to terms with their self-image until well into adulthood, says Michelle Breyer, co-founder of the Web site NaturallyCurly.com.

“When you’re growing up, you focus on the things that you feel different about, your insecurities,” she says. “Your hair is such a visible part of who you are. If you have a bad feeling about your hair as a child, that can follow you for decades.”

Blame it on the rise of the hairdresser in 18th century France, according to the book “Fashions in Hair: The 1st 5,000 Years” (Peter Owen, $139.95, 736 pages) by Richard Corson.

While hairstyles lasted for centuries in ancient Egypt and Rome, the appearance of the hairdresser made turnover in follicle fashion a livelihood. And with the whims of fashion, which define sexy as ringlets one minute and stick-straight locks the next, goes the fleeting self-esteem of young girls everywhere.

“Hair is one of the things that is most susceptible to trends,” Breyer says. “A person can buy clothes that fit a certain trend, but your hair fits that trend or it doesn’t.”

A statement in hair

While hairdos and styles come and go like the seasons — think beehive, bouffant and poodle cut — hair can reflect the politics and mood of the era.

In her book “Hair: Public, Political, Extremely Personal” (St. Martin’s Griffin, $13.95, 256 pages), Diane Simon writes about how thousands of women lined up to slash their locks into bobs in the 1920s, part of the “ambivalent, manic decade when so much of America seemed to change so fast.”

There was Prohibition, women’s suffrage, traffic lights and flapper dresses, and the short, carefree bob fit the part.

The Afro of the 1960s was a statement for African Americans, rejecting the “cost, pain and racial implications of chemical relaxers and perms,” Simon writes. “By association, it celebrated anything that opposed white power and intransigence, and figures now as a visual icon that captures all of the turmoil, hope and anger of those years.”

Politics aside, hair has the power to make someone a star and, on the flip side, to snatch fame away with the snip of the scissors.

Look at Jennifer Aniston, whose polished shag turned “The Rachel” into a legitimate fashion term. The hairstyle resonated with thousands of women who wanted a “good-girl cut” with a little layered edge, author Weingarten says.

And when Keri Russell hacked away her long brown curls, her TV show, “Felicity,” was practically dumped on the salon floor.

“The show was about a waifish girl trying to deal with life,” Weingarten says. “Her shorter hair represented independence, and Middle America decided she wasn’t the good girl anymore — all because a cute girl got a haircut.”

Unruly and unpredictable

You’ve got your doe-brown eyes. You’ve got your flawless skin. But your hair has a mind of its own.

“Humidity, heat and things like that can undo anything you’ve done to it. It’s going to do what it wants to do,” says Breyer of NaturallyCurly.com. “It’s something that’s never constant.”

Add that uncertainty to the generalizations people make based on appearance, and good hair equates a frazzling affair with the hair dryer.

A person who has a clean cut with every strand locked into place might be considered meticulous and detail-oriented. Crazy, unruly hair is expected atop an artist or writer, or perhaps a person who takes pride in defying the rules. And short, low-maintenance hair might be found framing the face of a new mother who has little time for personal primping.

“Hair is kind of a measure of so many things,” says Michael Ray Smith, an associate professor of mass communication at Campbell University in North Carolina. “It’s a measure of your social class, it’s a measure of your affluence, it’s a measure of your hipness.”

And a different hairstyle can even change who you are, part of the reason why some go for a radically different ‘do after a painful break-up. Breyer has a friend who went from brown to red, and with the new color came a new demeanor.

“I think her personality changed a little when she dyed her hair red,” she says. “If you feel sexier because you have red hair, it makes such a difference on your life.”

The bill

With our obsession about lovely locks comes a whopping price tag and an intimate relationship with our hair- stylists. A weekly $55 treatment flies off the shelves at NaturallyCurly.com, and hair products and salon visits — the more expensive the better — tend to be recession- proof, Breyer says.

“People will spend much more on haircuts and colors than they will on other things,” she says. “It makes a dramatic change in your appearance — you can’t lose 10 pounds in a half-hour, but you can get a totally different haircut.”

And ditching your stylist is as serious as filing for divorce.

“What your stylist can do for you is such a dramatic thing, it’s such a personal thing. They know every gray hair you have, they know every insecurity about your hair, which is kind of your insecurities about yourself,” Breyer says. “And you spend a lot of time in that chair and you probably tell them more about yourself than anyone else.”

Some fall into the trap of keeping the hairstyle they came of age in. But the ponytailed professor no longer stands for rebellion and counterculture, says mass communication professor Smith.

“What they’re doing is shouting through their clothing and their hair, ‘Man, I just can’t give up the ‘60s and I can’t give up that whole culture, and it’s who I am, it defines me,’” he says.

In a society of conformity, hairstyle is one way to stand apart. “I’m going to do something to my personal appearance so I’m not the same as the guy next door,” Smith says. “People use hair as prestige; it’s a bit like the peacock with the plumage.”

But what is the very core of this desire for good hair? It reaches into our animal instincts, Smith says.

“We tend to think that people are kind of genetically coded to be attracted to people who would be good reproductive partners,” he says. “So a good head of hair is a good indicator that this person would be a healthy partner.”

Style points

Trivia from “Hello Gorgeous! Beauty Products in America ‘40s-’60s” by Rachel Weingarten:

-- In the fairy tale, long, golden hair saves Rapunzel when her prince climbs her tresses and rescues her from a tower.

-- One version of the legend of the naked ride of Lady Godiva has her saving her modesty with her yards of hair.

-- Hair was of such importance to Catherine II of Russia that she reportedly kept her wig maker in an iron cage in her bedroom for more than three years.

-- The U.S. War Department during World War II asked actress Veronica Lake to get a new hairdo because it feared the female factory workers who copied her “peekboo” haircut would get their hair caught in the machinery.

-- After the practical look characterized the war-torn 1940s, curls, waves and coils defined the 1950s, when Rayve Wave and Lilt home permanents were introduced.

-- The love-hate affair with the blow-dryer began when Conair introduced the first portable model in 1959.

-- The average human has 100,000 hairs and loses an average of 40 to 100 strands each day.

-- Blonds have more hair than dark-haired people.

-- To keep your hair static-free, rub a clothes dryer softener sheet over it.