Back in December, I got the single best haircut of my life. You can see it here, a little windswept:

I was just going to do my usual Great Clips $12 special, but my boyfriend had bought me a gift certificate to one of those silly-but-trendy salons, so I sucked it up and went. The salon was silly. Too-loud music played and I had to shout at the receptionist to be heard. People lounged in that studies pose you see when you’re told to lounge for a photograph. But the stylist? Fantastic. The hair products? Primo. Normally I duck and run when hair products are brought up - I make and sell my own very simple and effective materials, but this stuff did things that mine didn’t do, and the scent still produces a rhapsody from me.

I didn’t realize how much good hair can change my entire look. So all these years I’ve been walking around with mediocre hair, focused more on the clothing palette. I see the big picture now. I still need hair to be lower maintenance, but I can live with brushing it once a day.

And I hope that someday, you too can luck into a fabulous yet affordable stylist.

In the meantime, I have gone hunting for some good hair advice places. There are those websites where you can pay to upload your picture and then see different haircuts on yourself - my father was particularly impressed with these for some reason. Or you can ask friends, if you color, test-dye clippings of your hair, or even experiment with wigs.

The problem I’m encountering is that hair is a loaded topic. Hair isn’t just hair. It’s a racial discussion. It’s a health topic. It’s a political act if you choose not to start coloring as soon as you see grey, white or silver hairs. I have white hairs appearing slowly near my widow’s peak, and I love them. My simple act of enjoyment has become a political act. Just like dying my hair red in the 20s turned out to be some sexual signal with implications I just didn’t understand.

So all I can really do is step back and give some simple guidelines.

My guidelines are simple: looking for a good haircut is very similar to choosing the right pair of glasses. The right haircut/style:

Beyond that are more factors than one person can account for. If you’re on a good style hunt, I recommend the How-to-Hair Guide by my favorite fashion magazine, Marie Claire. They generally steer you right - and take diversity into account.