My blonde ambition

"Are you sure you’re not a Russian spy or something?” The man asking me this knows full well I can’t be, but he sounds hopeful all the same. I’m in a coffee shop on Paul Street in Cork and two guys I know socially have been staring at me for the last half an hour. I can’t say I blame them. The last time they saw me I was a crop-haired brunette, now they’re talking to a platinum blonde.

As a social experiment I’ve replaced my usual hairstyle — short, dark and curly — with an ice-white, chin-length bob. My hair is now the exact same colour as Jean Harlow’s in Platinum Blonde, the 1931 Hollywood movie that not only gave this shade its name, but turned it into a globally recognised shorthand for sex appeal.

“Very French”, was how the stylist described my wig when she put it on me. With this hair, I’ve joined the ranks of such Gallic femmes fatales as Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve, not to mention a certain American actress who went by the name of Marilyn. My blonde locks have the arctic whiteness of Hitchcock heroines like Tippi Hendren and Kim Novak, the same shade more recently modelled to no less effect by stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johansson and Michelle Williams.