Read: Hair, An Essay by Ruth Rosengarten

I am thirteen, and this is Johannesburg. Everyone praises my long, auburn hair. Titian, some call it, though it will will be several years before I learn that Titian is the name of a painter; that many voluptuous women in his paintings have rich red tresses. I love my hair, but it seems old fashioned: the wavy ponytail, the wayward fringe. It’s the 1960s.

I scour magazines when I can lay my hands on them: Cosmopolitan, Elle. With my pocket money, I have started buying Jackie, a magazine that gets flown in all the way from London, which already occupies a big place in my imagination. There are pull-out centrefolds of singers and bands I’ve never heard of. Longingly, I examine fashion models parading pixie cuts. I hanker for their doe-eyed, skinny loveliness, the edginess of their hairstyles, the crisp geometry of their short dresses. Especially, for the boys they surely attract.