Hair is local. Until I moved to Europe, I thought that hair, like other important social issues, was global. Everyone grows it. Everyone cuts it, with a few notable exceptions (Chinese princesses and Crystal Gayle come to mind). Everyone talks about it. And herein lies the danger. With hair, you can think global, but you must talk local because, as I found out, hair can be lost in translation.

One day in Barcelona I remarked to my friend Flora, a beautiful former flamenco dancer, that my hair had grown past its point of critical mass. "I know just where to take you," she replied.

The next morning, we go to Barcelona Beauty School.

The interior is a study, or the lack thereof, in black and white: white walls, ceiling, sinks, and counters, black-and-white tile floor, black chairs, black tables. Young women in white coats file by, carrying white Styrofoam heads. This procession of maidens bearing slightly shrunken heads gives me the feeling that I have entered the store-front temple of some mysterious cult.

Atop each pasty-white crown is a different kind, condition, and color of hair: in or out of curlers, with or without permanent lotion, streaked or not streaked, straight or frizzed, long or short, and in every conceivable tint. I have the uneasy sense I'm about to sacrifice something.

I smile timidly at the young semi-blonde, semi-brunette who leads me to a big cup of a black chair at the shampoo station. Once my long and heavy locks are clean and wet, she leads me to a black swivel-throne.

"I need a layered cut," I tell her.

She smiles and says, "We call that 'escalada' -- a 'scaled cut.'"

This sounds reasonable.

After dropping the comb on the floor and wiping it on her white coat, the young stylist-to-be begins her work. The school owner joins us. Working together, the two women cut my hair at an angle, not in layers. I watch them in the mirror, masking my concern. I imagine that when they are done, my hair will angle straight down to my shoulders like the sleeve of a Japanese kimono. But I am wrong. The cut is just the beginning.

Next is the styling. "My hair is naturally wavy," I explain.

The stylists tell me that "natural waves" create a "hueco natural," literally a "natural hole" beneath one's tresses. Images from the movie "Bride of Frankenstein" flash through my mind. I see a Styrofoam head behind me, being carried to its fate.

"Do you want your 'hueco' to look like hers?" the master hair-woman asks me, pointing to her apprentice. The young woman's bangs are projectile and her waves wayward, if not downright rebellious. Her hair has a lot of body, though, which is reassuring.

"Sí, like hers," I lie, not having the vocabulary to ask for some other result and not wanting to pass judgement on the girl in front of her peers. She did smile a lot and she did do a nice job of washing my hair.

With thick white gel and numerous black tools, the master and her apprentice create my "hueco de hair." When the deed is done, I survey myself in the mirror while the other teachers and students gather round their first American experiment. I now sport many dark seaweed-like strands, each a different length, all snaking down and out to pointed "scaled" ends about two inches above my shoulders. Everyone smiles, and I join in, with that weak, wan smile that I've come to use all too frequently in this foreign world, a smile that hides discomfort and confusion rather than expressing genuine delight.

"Qué maja," says one white-coated maiden. "Maja" means "charming." That is, when the term is not used to refer to a lady of the evening, or Goya's naked duchess hanging in the Prado.

A flamenco song is playing on the radio at the receptionist's desk. Flora begins to dance. I see why in her youth she was called "The Gypsy from Sacramonte," even though not one ounce of gypsy blood flows in the veins beneath her smooth olive skin. Her large dark eyes shine as she curves her arms through the air and snaps her fingers.

As the attention shifts toward Flora and away from me, I feel free at last to stop smiling. I contemplate my cosmetological situation in the mirror, feeling thoroughly alone, not to mention hair-abused. My inner voice sings, "Hairdo from Spain, I can't stand you. Hairdo from Spain, I must change you." Is there such a product as anti-gel?

When I moved to Spain, I turned my back on my native tongue and my editorial dream job at Harcourt Brace. I sold the only nice car I'd ever owned and lost my sleek washer-dryer combo to an Arab electrician who was sure he knew how to make it work in Spain--until it started smoking. Now, I've lost my hair, damn it. From a pate full of free-flowing American waves, my hair has gone into a dark and ruinous pyramid. These nice women have taken my hair away from me. It's their hair now, not mine.

Just before I succumb to that inner wrenching sensation called homesickness, before memory pulls me back to Wichita Falls, Texas, where hairstylists know what layered and wavy mean and no one ever tried to put a hole in my hair, I glimpse Scarlet O'Hara in black and white on the wall behind me. She has appeared before in my moments of discomfort--in cold hotel rooms, over the head of a small-town judge, in a hospital cafeteria. And here she is again: my Southern icon, symbol of silliness - and strength. Now I smile a delight smile, not a hide-the-discomfort smile; and somehow I don't feel quite so alone.

And tomorrow is another . . . hair grows.

I look down at the piles of my abandoned locks. I look up to admire Flora's dance. Girls gossip in the corner, holding those heads in their hands. The morning light pours through the store-front window. I pay a few coins for the creative damage done. Then Flora and I walk out the door singing the last line of the dancing song, arm-in-arm, into the sun.

Ysabel de la Rosa is an American writer and graphic artist living in Pelayos de la Presa, in Spain's Madrid Province. She is a regular contributor to the online publications ArtNet, ApogeePhoto, ARTnewsroom.com, and Global Writers' Ink. Her writing in Spanish has appeared in El Noticiero, Mundo Clásico.com, Flamenco World, the German Flamenco Pages, and in the University of Alicante's textbook on health issues in Europe and the Third World.