Getting a power bob in my 60s has made me feel like a new woman!

JANE GORDON: Getting a power bob in my 60s has made me feel like a new woman!

Why did I say yes? I am sitting in a chair in Jo Hansford’s luxury Knightsbridge salon suffering from a sudden fear of scissors.

Perhaps it’s not so irrational. After all, for most of my adult life I have hidden behind my hair, it’s been my protective veil against the world, the final frontier of my ageing vanity. The last reminder of my carefree youth. And, as such, never to be trifled with.

A terrifying car accident several years ago that left me hospitalised and unable to move made me confront the ageing process head-on.

I wrote a book, How Not To Get Old, in which I took on a series of challenges designed to boost my cognitive skills and physical strength.

In a bid to remain healthy and independent for as long as possible, I learnt how to box, ballroom dance, speak French and meditate.

But could a new hairstyle — and a fresh sense of identity — also play a part in winding back the years?

There was only one way to find out: to part with the look I have barely changed since the last century and embrace the Power Bob, the unforgiving, jaw-skimming cut that’s being hailed as the big trend of the year.

Unlikely as it was that I could even dream of emulating the likes of Beyonce, 40, and J.Lo, 52, who’ve both unveiled their razor-sharp cuts this spring, the chance to try was too tempting to resist.

True, I was more than a decade older than both icons, but there was something about their defiant looks — jaws jutting forward and framed to precision with steadfast sleek strands — that appealed.

Or maybe I could pull off a Rosamund Pike, an English rose who’s also recently had a purposeful prune, and be left with a look that’s businesslike but unthreatening?

Away from the red carpet, the Power Bob is being hailed as a ‘return to the office’ post-pandemic trend, an empowering antidote to the two-year period of WFH, when style went AWOL and appearances counted for nought.

It is a sign, fashion commentators suggest, that women are ‘back in business’, imparting a boardroom attitude even in those of us who are ‘a certain age’.

There is no doubt that my hairstylist today, Pasquale Bifulco, means business. The Italian precision cutter, who has been based in London for nine years, appraises my hair in a rather intimidating and clinical way, which only adds to my fear of making such a radical change to my look.

‘When women reach their 50s, they do one of two things. They decide to go short or they do what you have done, they stick to the comfort zone of the style that worked when they were 20 but definitely won’t suit them by the time they reach 60.’

The fact that what suits a woman at 20 won’t work when she is 60 isn’t just down to the way in which her face changes, he tells me.

It is also linked to the way in which the texture and thickness of the hair changes during menopause. The hair and beauty industry, a market worth approximately £10 billion a year, is just waking up to the changes menopause can make to our hair, including thinning due to hormonal imbalance.

Witness the current advertising campaign for Pantene’s Hair Biology Menopause collection, which is being marketed on a promise to give women ‘great hair even in menopause’.

Pasquale asserts that it is important to work on the condition of your hair as you age with regular treatments and less reliance on the things that can damage it, such as products containing ‘toxic chemicals’ and over-using styling aids such as high-powered dryers and hair straighteners.

But a good cut that ‘fits with the contours of the head’ can act, he adds, as a ‘frame for the house’ that can revitalise a woman.

But dressed in the kind of shoulder-padded red jacket that I wore back in the 1980s, it is almost as if I have taken on an exciting new identity. Pictured: Rosamund Pike, who Jane was inspired by

With my hair washed and conditioned I braced myself, wincing as Pasquale makes the first cut.

‘It is important for the outcome that you stay still,’ he says sternly. ‘The mechanic cannot fix the car if the car can’t stop moving.’

For the next hour I sit still, transfixed by the changes taking place in the mirror, suddenly aware of an unfamiliar draught around my newly-exposed neck. But, amazingly, by the time Pasquale has started to blow-dry his creation, I am beginning to feel like a new woman. Just as he promised.

In fact, I can’t imagine why I held on to my locks for so long. My new cut may take a little getting used to. I find myself unconsciously going to flick back the hair that covered my shoulders for so long, only to find that there is nothing there to flick.

But dressed in the kind of shoulder-padded red jacket that I wore back in the 1980s, it is almost as if I have taken on an exciting new identity.

It gives me a dizzying feeling of rejuvenation that goes way beyond vanity. I almost forget that I am a granny in her 60s and not a power-dressed woman of 30. I’ve cast off the anchor of my old self.

The sensation is both uplifting and invigorating. But what to do with my new look?

My family bring me down to earth. Back at home on a FaceTime call later with my elder daughter and eight-year-old granddaughter, I am reassured, to paraphrase J.Lo, they ‘aren’t fooled by the locks that I got, I am still Granny from the block’ . . .

Albeit one with a liberating new zest for life.

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