This Is The World’s Most Popular Hairstyle

… But does that mean it's right for me, aka should us mere mortals go there? And even more NB, should I?

Ayo Edebiri and the award season bob

Take a deep breath and go… There’s the bob, the shaggy bob, the pob, the lob, the asymmetrical bob, the French bob, stacked bob, curtain bob, Hollywood bob, box bob, blunt bob, wolf bob, soft bob… I hope you’re reading these fast and breathlessly like a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta or the effect is ruined! In a nutshell, the bob is big news and there are loadsa options, otherwise known in normal parlance as a haircut. But we’ve made it fashun.

Bob’s poster girl Zendaya snapped watching the tennis this week - unrelated but the very cute vid can be watched here

Since I was once the girl who wrote an entire three-page trends feature piece for Style magazine on the new season’s return of the fringe – big news, btw, and it allowed me to get a glorious hair make-over, which I could blame on work rather than impulse – I am obvs intrigued. And desperate for a chop.

Nowadays the most noticeable thing about my hair is the fact that I am choosing to go grey naturally. This, in itself, is a contentious decision. Not for me, mind you, but for The Sisterhood in general. Us gals feel very strongly about our hair and whether we are choosing to colour or choosing to grey.

Nicked this pic from Styvol - a great local blog

Going grey is a major side-note on the path to the bob, but I decided to lose the balayage in my 40s when I was already starting to pluck out the odd grey hair from my head. Those of you who have tried plucking The Odd Grey Hair will know that these hairs come back swinging - with wild and unbridled abandon - and they do not grow back in their own lane. They return bolt upright, thick and absolutely untameable. No amount of sleeking them, pulling them into a ponytail, blow drying them into submission keeps them down. They are proud. Witches of Macbeth proud. Damn them!

So I gave up. Greys – 1, Dani – 0. I started growing out my highlights and I’ve been natural now for years. Obvs as soon as The Greys knew they’d won, they slowed down their profligate growth spurt, so I am still slowly going grey, one silver strand at a time. My mother would, of course, be calling this silver and not grey. Just FYI, silver foxes out there.

Why is hair so important to us gals? I can recall my hair fails as viscerally as if it were last month, not 30-odd years ago. My very first hair fail came in the mid-80s care of Princess Diana. Didn’t so many of us in the 80s have a hair story about The Lady Di – it was The Rachel of the 80s. I had long, curly brown hair – my dearest mama had lost hours, possibly days, of her life, corralling those stubborn curls into wee hairtie bobbles.

One fine day inside Stuttafords, the collision of trend and practicality got the better of her and she instructed her hair dresser to cut me a Lady Di. Except when you’re a gangly, raven-haired tween in a Woolies stripey knit with short hair, you look fok all like Lady Di. You just look like a bit of a tool. Well, at any rate, I thought I looked like a total moron. Plus my name was Danielle, which shortened to Dan. And I had a boy’s haircut to boot. My brother thought it was hilarious. I couldn’t wait for that bloody haircut to grow out, I didn’t cut my hair until after matric… It was practically down to my bum by then.

Fortunately it was the late 80s so I have very little visual proof of this epic parental fail on the part of my mother and I could lust after Meg Ryan’s shaggy cool cut in peace. I also tried mimicking many a When Harry Met Sally wardrobe choice - and still think this is peak winter coolth. As my hair grew, I was just in time to to rock that Sloaney Alice band and pouff brilliantly - and I was the boss of a banana clip. Jirre.

By the 90s, I could use every inch of my locks to be truly excellent (Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, anyone?) at dancing in nightclubs to Seattle’s finest indie bands. I still had enough lingering PTSD for the Lady Di that I bypassed The Rachel altogether - sorry Jen Aniston - but by 21, I was ready for a change.

And we all know that when gals are in need of a big change, a dramatic change of hair is always on the checklist. Right?! I stepped off that varsity bus, straight into a hair salon in Rosebank and instructed them to cut my hair off above my hair band. The short hair was back. One of my oldest and dearest friends, Kirsten and I seemed to do this simultaneously. And we have very few pics to prove it, small mercies, but – lord – those that remain are hysterical. In retrospect, we look nothing like we thought we looked, which was: the bomb dot com. I also owned a snakeskin jacket at the time. I paired The Hair with the jacket a lot. So there is much to forgive.

By my mid 20s it had grown out and I coloured by hair for the first time – blonde highlights! God, how I loved them. Being in your 20s and blonde should come with a health warning – too much fun will be had here! And it was… Boyfriends, career and eventually a wedding and a job that led to that trend feature on The Fringe before I slowly started the return to my much darker natural brunette. I stand firm that for every dark-haired girl of continental descent, there is Her Blonde Era. It’s essential. And now there’s The Grey…

… But back to the bob. Dit was orals op die red carpet, from Ayo Edebiri and Emma Stone accepting their awards to the new guard of Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, Kaia Gerber, Hailey Bieber, Gigi Hadid, Selena Gomez, Elizabeth Olsen. They’ve all had their locks chopped off and I want in. Did you know that Google search data around the world rates the most popular hairstyle as the classic bob and Tiktok has the bob hashtag sitting at close to 700 million.

So what makes bobs so damn popular? It was apparently ‘invented’ at the dawn of the last century by a Parisian hairdresser called Antoine de Paris – sounds like a hairdresser doesn’t he? - who used Joan of Arc as his inspiration. By the 1920s, the bob had became a rebellious symbol of the shift in society and now, as a roll towards 50 – only next year, to be clear! – I’m all in for that shift.

An iteration of The Fringe circa the Jessie J years

I fear I am going to be using Turning Fifty as a really good excuse for anything and everything for at least the next two years. Last week, I returned from Madrid. Yes, Madrid, Spain, A bunch of old besties and I packed up our winter duds not just for Riocha and Jamon Iberico (which tracks with approaching 50, non?) but for Depeche Mode, who were live in concert. *Cue screams.

More on this in next week’s newsie - suffice to say: it was life-affirming to find yourself singing along to a band you’ve been listening to for four decades, knowing every single word and guitar strum, with thousands of other fans. With equally creaky knees. It’s deeply, deeply cheesy but here goes anyway (!!) … As Depeche Mode would say: ‘I just can’t get enough’. GROAN, I know, I knowww, okay, bye.