WaPo Writes 1,000-Word Story on Hillary's Hair

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton serves as further proof that women do not have to kowtow to expectations, rules of thumb or other quietly bullying cultural assumptions. She is a role model for women who are past the ingenue phase of their lives. She is making a fashion statement.

Clinton, at age 62, has grown out her hair. And it looks quite nice.

Conventional wisdom advises that after a certain age -- 50ish -- women should cut their hair. It's impossible to trace this bit of advice to the first tyrant who uttered it. But over generations, it has become ingrained in beauty lore. Some women might continue to wear flowing hair deep into their AARP years, but they do so knowing they're flouting accepted practice.

This belief remains stubbornly unchanged despite a generation of salon owners who've grown hoarse explaining that hairstyles should be tailored to the individual. The axiom survives despite bountiful evidence of its wrongheadedness: Take note of elegantly aging women such as Catherine Deneuve, Patricia Clarkson, Meryl Streep. The cut-your-hair mantra has nothing to do with whether it is thin or lush, streaked with gray or luminous with $500 highlights. It's not a friendly nudge to make sure a woman doesn't get mired in her own past. Just cut it.

The abundance of short coifs on women of a certain age is especially pronounced in Washington and in politics, where there are fewer creative iconoclasts, rule-breakers and eccentrics who simply don't care what others think. For years, Clinton had a softly layered style -- one with volume on top that flowed gently inward to the nape of the neck. It was a look she settled on after years of dealing with the public's obsession with her headbands, her bangs, her bob. She finally found a style that was a keeper, and even loosed her own wry humor over the outsize media interest in a woman's right to play with her hair. What does it all mean? Nothing. Everything.