. . . from the unforgivable to the divine.

A scene from the early ’70s: Roger Blais, a man who had been cutting hair for just five years or so at that point, stands patiently with clippers in one hand, scissors in the other. In the chair before him sits a teenager engaged in a loud and life-changing argument with his not-so-patient dad.

“The kid wants his hair long,” Blais says. “His parents want it short. As a barber, you’d end up right in the middle of it, acting like a diplomat and trying to keep everybody happy.”

If the school yearbooks are any indication, the kids won more of those arguments than the parents did. The age of long hair was upon the land, a shift in culture that manifested itself on the tops of our heads.

After that, it was the age of the perm. Then the mohawk, the mullet and more than a few hair styles that defied description.

Now flash forward 40 years or so . . . and welcome to yesterday.

A time of great choice

My friends, it’s spring. You’ve got to get that mangled mess of hair in order, and that means you’ve got a decision to make:

Will it be a quick color and curl? A six-hour marathon in the stylist’s chair?

A faux hawk, a lob, a boho? Balayage, a fade, an Ombre?

Whatever you call it, it turns out that the new trends are not so different from the old ones and, in fact, some of them are exactly the same. Ask Moe Landry, who has been manning the clippers for 55 years.

“When I first came onboard,” Landry said, “hair styles were exactly what they are today: a lot of short buzz haircuts, a lot of clipper cuts.”

In many ways, hair has come full circle, both nationally and locally. In Lewiston, Kim Craig is nearing a quarter-century of hair care herself, running Hair 2000 on East Avenue in Lewiston. If you want to know why hair styles tend to go from neat to exotic and then back again, Craig is a good one to ask.

“In the early ’90s we were just coming out of the big hair ’80s,” she says. “Big hair, tight perms, mullets, designs carved out on the sides or in the back. Dorothy Hamel cuts on little girls. Only the tight perms and big mall bangs have not resurrected in hair fashion. Everything else is coming back full circle. The styles are modified but the way you cut it is still the same. I still today get a guy who wants to rock the mullet or a tail. The mohawk is back – punk rocker colors of pink, purple, green, blue are being worn once again. Even the pompadour is back in fashion. Anything goes.”

But why, Craig, why? In an age when it’s not unusual to see a girl with a bright green mohawk standing behind a fellow with a shaved-bald head and a handlebar mustache, we wonder why the trends change the way they do.

Go figure: Things like the economy play a part.

“When I started in Lewiston, there were the ladies who worked the shoe shops,” Craig says. “They didn’t have the time to have sets and fuss with their hair, so the very short and tight poodle perms were popular for them. Easy – wash and go. Two or three days a week could be full of weekly shampoos and sets. They faithfully have their hair done to look nice for Saturday night and Sunday church. I still have a few customers left that have this routine, ranging from 70 to 92 years old today. We are keeping the barbering as old school as possible with hot towels and shaving cream. It’s a treat. And it’s sentimental. The smell of bay rum after-lotion sends them right back to being in the barber chair as a kid or what Pepere use to smell like.”

It’s just hair

Human hair is a protein filament that grows from follicles found within the dermis. Upon the human head, it serves as a source of heat insulation and cooling, and provides protection from ultraviolet radiation exposure.

Sexy right?

A few weeks ago, Kim Kardashian’s decision to color her “protein filament that grows from follicles within the dermis” platinum blond absolutely rocked the nation. Across the nation, and in other parts of the world, this celebrity hair color change was front page news, occasionally eclipsing less life-impacting news – you know, like military moves in the Ukraine or tensions between Israel and Iran threatening to go nuclear.

At some point in our history, hair, for whatever reason, became something of huge importance that went far beyond keeping the head warm. The protein filament obsession made billionaires out of people who peddle fancy shampoos and dyes at jaw-dropping prices. People pay those prices, too, because to the true enthusiast a bad hair day is as disastrous as anything.

“There are some who really care about their hair,” Landry says. “They take good care of it. Back in the ’60s, a gallon of shampoo for a buck was good enough. Today they’ll spend $10,$12 dollars for an eight-ounce bottle.”

And we’re not talking about just a few vain women who carry their poodles to the salon twice a week. At some point in the past 50 years, it became perfectly all right for men to fuss over their quaffs as well.

“The term metrosexual came along,” says Kathy Brownrigg, Landry’s daughter who has been working on the  other side of his shop for 26 years. “Men started taking care of themselves and grooming more came into play. That’s when men started with the hair wax and the pomades and stuff like that. They got more into the girly part of it.”

And why not? As Craig points out, hair is among the first things you notice when you meet someone for the first time. Hair is where first impressions are born.

“Hair is more important to people than we like to admit,” Craig says. “One of those things, you don’t miss it until it’s gone. If your hair looks bad you feel bad, if it looks great you have a bounce in your step. If it’s a bad hair cut or it’s starting to recede, you wear a hat.”

Got a big date? Get a haircut. Job interview? A trim and a shave is essential. The fact is, hair impacts our daily lives so much that you ignore it at your peril. The stylists and barbers count on it. Any day, the styles could change and influence business in a negative way.

Ask Landry, who remembers a time when there were 11 barber shops located in a few square blocks between Pine, Walnut, Park and Maple streets in Lewiston. Eleven! And there was plenty of business for all.

“People used to get their hair cut every two weeks,” he says. “They’d come in for just a neck trim. When the longer styles came in, with the Beatles and all that, everybody was letting their hair grow. They went from getting their hair cut every two weeks to every four to six weeks. You lost half of your business without losing one customer.”

Learn the styles or else

Blais, who founded and still works at Roger’s Haircutters in Auburn, has been cutting hair since 1966. He didn’t have any moral issues when longer hair began to take over the country. After all, he was pretty young at the time, himself.

“Oh, I had long hair,” Blais says now. “I was in a band.”

A barber couldn’t afford to scorn any hairstyle because they were always evolving, with new trends typically coming over from Europe, where, according to Blais, “they tend to get a little wild.” A young man who demanded long hair one week might be back the very next week for a permanent. A permanent!

“People just get bored I think,” Blais says.

To hang on to your customers in the years beginning in the late 60s, a hair professional had to learn new things. He or she had to give the people what they wanted, even if what they wanted seemed absurd to the point of ludicrous.

“With the longer hair trend, you had to cut hair differently,” Landry says. “I said, ‘The day I have to put hairspray on a guy, I’m getting out of the business.’ A lot of people did get out of the business.”

And bowl cuts. You remember those, right? The hair was cut on a straight line around the head. In tough times, parents cut their kids’ hair that way, using an actual bowl to keep the cut even.

“If I ever had to do a cut like that in school,” Landry says, “they would have thrown me out. We were taught to blend. Blend everything. A bowl cut that was just straight across, that was a cardinal sin.”

When American men and boys went from short hair to long in the ’60s and ’70s, it was much more than a fashion statement. It was a revolution. It was rebellion, against the government, against the American culture, or just against your parents, who tried so valiantly to keep you a part of the old ways.

“My ultimate hair story,” says John Frechette, of Lewiston: “My father’s obsessive need for me to have a bowl cut when I was growing up, so he could pick me out of a crowd. . . . He hated my long hair and my smoking. On the day he died I torched my hair lighting a cigarette. He always was a smartass.”

A revolution of hair was upon the country. Instead of being stubborn about it, Landry went back to school and learned how to style in new and different ways. That way, he could still give the clipper cuts, but he could also do the fancy stuff, for both men and women alike. How has that worked out? For 30 years now, Landry, whose shop is located on Blake Street, has been the only barber in a section of the city that once crawled with them.

Share your hair

I have a niece, not yet 13, who routinely spends six hours in a chair to get her hair curled and extended and God knows what else. Six hours for a person at an age when sitting in one place for six minutes is a chore — proof that a hair style is important, even if it serves no purpose that a $1 hat couldn’t handle.

But it’s not all narcissism and vanity. In a world where metric tons of hair hit salon floors across the world every hour, a few altruistic souls have found a way to parlay that into good things.

“I’ve donated two ponytails to Locks of Love — they make wigs for kids that lose their hair because of medical challenges,” says Tracy Clark Gosselin of Lisbon. “I happened to be working in a retail store the last time I did. One of my co-workers commented on my over-night transformation, and I told her I had donated my hair. A customer overheard the conversation, and I ended up receiving a tearful thank-you and a hug from the customer. Her daughter had been a recipient of one of their wigs. They really do a lot of good for sick kids.”

Craig is part of that compassionate hair machine. When someone loses their hair, the emotional attachment to it becomes all that much greater. For those people enduring cancer treatments, the loss of hair they’ve had all their lives becomes an additional source of stress and pain.

“I do cut wigs for those going through chemo,” she says. “It breaks my heart. But I’ve known their hair all these years and I can cut and style a wig that looks just like their own. It’s not JUST hair.”

Well, there’s no such thing as JUST hair. Not these days. And while short and trim hair among men is one of the latest trends, it would be pure folly to ignore all those men running around with facial hair flying.

Blame the Red Sox.

“I think the trend for men now is facial hair,” Craig says. “If you grow a good beard, flaunt it. I am seeing some awesome beards right now. Mike Napoli set the trend.”

Landry sees the same thing. But while beards go through this resurgence, you shouldn’t get the idea that these people are lumber jacks who just don’t have the time or inclination to get their faces shaved.

“A lot of them keep their beards well trimmed,” Landry says. “You don’t see a lot of the big beards where they just let it go. If you hold down a job, you’ve got to look a little bit trim.”

He gives that a moment of thought.

“Except for the Red Sox,” he adds. “When they let go, they let go.”

Blais, who wore a beard himself for nearly 25 years, tends to agree.

“Beards are great. I love beards,” he says. “But you’ve got to maintain them. If you don’t, you look like the Wildman of Borneo.”

Color me

Spring’s a-coming, all right. When the flowers and leaves bloom again, so will the hair of men and women envisioning warm nights where the hair doesn’t have to be smothered by thick hats or coat hoods. With winter on its way out, getting a new do is as traditional as pulling the lawn mower out of the basement and stuffing all those ugly winter clothes into boxes.

“I love transformations,” says Craig. “The befores and afters. Spring is the best time of year for that. Men come in looking like bearded mountain men and leave looking sharp. Woman can have an entirely different appearance in an hour or two.”

You want some tips on managing that bird’s nest you call hair? Craig can do that, with some gentle warnings thrown in for good measure.

“The biggest thing is color,” she says. “It’s the fastest way to change your appearance and mood . Colors change with the seasons: subtle in the winter, lighter and brighter for summer. Color techniques and looks change when celebrities wear a certain look. It becomes all the rage when celebs change their looks.

“The important thing to remember,” Craig adds, “is that we can all do this style. But the celebrity: 1.) has the money to keep it up; 2.) has a personal stylist to follow her wherever she goes making her look beautiful; and 3.) has probably spent four hours in the chair to have her hair done right before walking down the red carpet or for the photo shoot. It’s unlikely you will look like that every day. But still, the trends of low lights and highlights will be my favorite thing to do and keep up with.”

Or maybe you should just get a mullet. After all, if history is any indication, that style like every other is bound to come back.

Hair today, gone tomorrow: A brief history of hair removal

While ruminating over our national obsession with the hair on our heads and chins, let us not forget the growing war on hair that grows in inconvenient places. You know what I’m talking about here, quit pretending to be clueless.

Legs? Lips? Ears? Neck? Back? Nostrils? If hair grows there, someone has invented a painful, and often hilarious, way to remove it.

“Although I only perform waxing and tweezing,” says stylist Kim Craig, “I believe you can remove hair via shaving, depilatory creams like Nair, waxing, tweezing, laser, electrolysis and those painful, as-seen-on TV, rip-it-out devises. No thanks.”

In addition to high- and low-tech gadgetry with colorful names like “The Mangroomer” and “Wonder Wax,” there are do-it-yourself tutorials and videos all over the web. I sincerely suggest you refrain from searching for them.

But the matter of ripping, shaving and yanking unwanted hair is nothing new. The history of hair removal methods and philosophy is so rich that Bates College professor Rebecca Herzig has written a book entirely dedicated to the topic.

“From the clamshell razors and homemade lye depilatories used in colonial America to the diode lasers and prescription pharmaceuticals available today,” goes the description of Herzig’s book “Plucked,” “Americans have used a staggering array of tools to remove hair deemed unsightly, unnatural or excessive. This is true especially for women and girls; conservative estimates indicate that 99 percent of American women have tried hair removal, and at least 85 percent regularly remove hair from their faces, armpits, legs and bikini lines.

How and when does hair become a problem — what makes some growth “excessive?” Who or what separates the necessary from the superfluous?

“By the turn of the 21st century, more and more Americans were waxing, threading, shaving or lasering themselves smooth,” according to the book’s Amazon page. “Herzig’s extraordinary account also reveals some of the collateral damages of the intensifying pursuit of hair-free skin. Moving beyond the experiences of particular patients or clients, Herzig describes the surprising histories of race, science, industry and medicine behind today’s hair-removing tools. ‘Plucked’ is an unsettling, gripping and original tale of the lengths to which Americans will go to remove hair.”

That’s using your head

Some current hair styles to consider:

* Lob: A layered bob cut. That sounds simple enough, but apparently there are a variety different lob styles. Jessica Alba, for instance, recently drew admiration and envy for her new Blunt Lob, which, frankly, I thought was a tennis move.

* Boho: Short for Bohemian, a style familiar to the hippie of the ’70s. Long hair with braids around the forehead would be considered Boho. Think of beachy or mermaid hair.

* Balayage: According to Marie Claire: “Balayage is a French word meaning to sweep or to paint. It allows for a sun-kissed natural looking hair color — similar to what nature gives us as children — with softer, less noticeable regrowth lines. The principal idea being less is more when creating soft, natural looks.”

* Ombre: A hair style of coloring that’s darker at the top lighter at the bottom. Low maintenance and so many options, according to the hair people.

* Faux hawk: A style in which a section of hair running from the front to the back of the head stands erect. It’s sort of a reluctant mohawk, in which the sides of the head are shaved.

* Fade: According to the website Manly Curls (no, really): “The Fade haircut is a men’s haircut that relies on having the hair on the sides and back of the head tapered in length gradually until no more hair is left on the skin. The fade doesn’t require a specific length on the top of the head – a male can have as much length as he may wish to, which gives rise to a lot of hair creativity.”

* High and tight: The military variant of the crew cut, with the hair slightly longer (but still quite short) at the top of the head. The style is commonly worn by men in the armed forces and in civilian law enforcement. Short hair cannot be grabbed in fists full by a bad guy, after all.

* Extensions: A means of lengthening one’s hair by incorporating artificial hair – or natural hair collected from other humans – by clip-on or other means of attachment. “Extensions are popular with young girls,” says Kim Craig, of Hair 2000. “They cost about $100 for a few pieces of fake long hair. Real extensions are seen in more urban areas.”