I’m chopping off my hair tonight. Actually, I’m paying a talented and lovely lady named Lindsay to chop my hair off for me.
My hair-cycle goes like so—I chop it. I grow it. I start putting it up constantly because its longness bugs me. I get hair-envy for other women’s short-n-sassy hairdos. I chop it. Repeat.
When I was a kid, it was long and blonde and wavy like the little Dutch-ish girl I was. It started turning brown and in high school I got sick of the long-with-bangs thing that had been going on forever. Remember the early 90’s? Somewhere during the grunge phase people were shaving the underside of their hair just a little bit around the neck line. Remember this? Maybe it was just my high school—after all, we were isolated from all forms of culture by a ten-mile-wide radius of cornfields. Anyway, for some God, God awful reason, I shaved off all the hair just around my neckline, leaving the rest long I’m pretty sure it is around this time that my parents laid awake in bed at night whispering to one another “Well, at least she’s not on crack.”
I soon realized what a foolish fit of blinded-by-teenage-idioticness this was, and decided to solve the problem by chopping the rest of it off. Lesson 1 about hair: Chopping it off is never the solution to a bad haircut.
I grew it out, and it was all pretty and good again. That is the good thing about hair: it grows, just not fast enough. And by late high school and college it was lovely and flowing. It was the kind of hair people walking into a salon look at and say “Make my hair do that.” Then I broke up with my boyfriend.
Lord almighty, I was insane with grief. I could not be trusted with such matters as who to date or how to dress myself—my heart had been crushed for the first time—and it is the job of a girl’s friends to monitor the idiotic urges of such a fragile teenager.
One day, roiling in my post-break-up pit-o-despair, Becky left me alone a little too long with our friend Erika, who was the least stable of the clique. Erika had been known to drink Zima and belt out country tunes while careening down the highway in her little 1991 red Ford Escort. Erika took me to get a haircut because she thought a new look would make me feel better. Lesson 2 about haircuts: Never get a haircut right after a break-up.
I took in a photo and asked the stylist for a short-ish bob, like the girl in the picture. I came out looking like my grandmother. In my small Indiana town, the hairdresser spent most of her time on little old ladies, so she cut my hair just like an old lady—a super-duper-beyond-repair short that looked absolutely nothing like the photo.
Naturally, I went home, threw myself on my bedroom floor and bawled. My life was over—I looked awful, my boyfriend broke up with me, it was never going to get better, he was going to see me like this, I’m never going to get over him, etc. etc. etc. Becky came over and sat there with me and suggested things like hats and bandanas and all the stuff that doesn’t help even though you wish it did.
Yeah. I remember that. That was awesome.
I grew it back out, then I chopped it off again. However, this time I utilized Lesson 3 about haircuts: Never, ever, ever get a drastic cut unless the stylist has cut your hair very well no less than a million times. Never. Amen. Hallelujah. Never.
My cousin Julia became a stylist, and she’s awesome. I’d trust her to cut my hair blindfolded. I had it short through the rest of college (but not THAT short) and it was very cute. I was told I could pull off short hair well. I had a pixie cut right after college. It was alright, but I wouldn’t do it again.
Then: Short, long, short, long.
Now it’s long and dried out and the color isn’t right and its driving me crazy. The plan tonight is to go have many inches cut off, but I’ve been known to walk into a salon and come out with something totally different than I had in mind when I went in, so we’ll see what happens. As long as I don’t come out looking like Great Aunt Margaret, I think I’ll survive.
My hair-cycle goes like so—I chop it. I grow it. I start putting it up constantly because its longness bugs me. I get hair-envy for other women’s short-n-sassy hairdos. I chop it. Repeat.
When I was a kid, it was long and blonde and wavy like the little Dutch-ish girl I was. It started turning brown and in high school I got sick of the long-with-bangs thing that had been going on forever. Remember the early 90’s? Somewhere during the grunge phase people were shaving the underside of their hair just a little bit around the neck line. Remember this? Maybe it was just my high school—after all, we were isolated from all forms of culture by a ten-mile-wide radius of cornfields. Anyway, for some God, God awful reason, I shaved off all the hair just around my neckline, leaving the rest long I’m pretty sure it is around this time that my parents laid awake in bed at night whispering to one another “Well, at least she’s not on crack.”
I soon realized what a foolish fit of blinded-by-teenage-idioticness this was, and decided to solve the problem by chopping the rest of it off. Lesson 1 about hair: Chopping it off is never the solution to a bad haircut.
I grew it out, and it was all pretty and good again. That is the good thing about hair: it grows, just not fast enough. And by late high school and college it was lovely and flowing. It was the kind of hair people walking into a salon look at and say “Make my hair do that.” Then I broke up with my boyfriend.
Lord almighty, I was insane with grief. I could not be trusted with such matters as who to date or how to dress myself—my heart had been crushed for the first time—and it is the job of a girl’s friends to monitor the idiotic urges of such a fragile teenager.
One day, roiling in my post-break-up pit-o-despair, Becky left me alone a little too long with our friend Erika, who was the least stable of the clique. Erika had been known to drink Zima and belt out country tunes while careening down the highway in her little 1991 red Ford Escort. Erika took me to get a haircut because she thought a new look would make me feel better. Lesson 2 about haircuts: Never get a haircut right after a break-up.
I took in a photo and asked the stylist for a short-ish bob, like the girl in the picture. I came out looking like my grandmother. In my small Indiana town, the hairdresser spent most of her time on little old ladies, so she cut my hair just like an old lady—a super-duper-beyond-repair short that looked absolutely nothing like the photo.
Naturally, I went home, threw myself on my bedroom floor and bawled. My life was over—I looked awful, my boyfriend broke up with me, it was never going to get better, he was going to see me like this, I’m never going to get over him, etc. etc. etc. Becky came over and sat there with me and suggested things like hats and bandanas and all the stuff that doesn’t help even though you wish it did.
Yeah. I remember that. That was awesome.
I grew it back out, then I chopped it off again. However, this time I utilized Lesson 3 about haircuts: Never, ever, ever get a drastic cut unless the stylist has cut your hair very well no less than a million times. Never. Amen. Hallelujah. Never.
My cousin Julia became a stylist, and she’s awesome. I’d trust her to cut my hair blindfolded. I had it short through the rest of college (but not THAT short) and it was very cute. I was told I could pull off short hair well. I had a pixie cut right after college. It was alright, but I wouldn’t do it again.
Then: Short, long, short, long.
Now it’s long and dried out and the color isn’t right and its driving me crazy. The plan tonight is to go have many inches cut off, but I’ve been known to walk into a salon and come out with something totally different than I had in mind when I went in, so we’ll see what happens. As long as I don’t come out looking like Great Aunt Margaret, I think I’ll survive.
1 comment:
"Then: Short, long, short, long."
Perhaps your hairstyles should follow some sort of Morse code logic. You can communicate clandestine messages by how you wear your hair. It's insidious and insidious is cool.
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