My short-hair fears started when I was a small child. For some reason, even though I was adorable with long hair, I was, one day, taken to my mother’s hairdresser and my hair was cut short. Maybe I had headlice? Maybe I put gum in my hair? Maybe I am remembering all of these things from Judy Blume novels? Mom?<\/p>\n
The hairdresser in question was named Helen. I do not think she reads this blog. She was middle aged thirty years ago, so she can’t hurt me now anyway. Helen was probably a fine hairdresser but she did not know how to cut curly hair, which was the kind of hair I had, even though you would not have known it because there was never enough left of it to curl when Helen was done with it. <\/p>\n
Puberty attacked me at age 11 with a five inch height increase, size 9 feet and lots of pimples but no breasts. I desperately needed something to hide behind. Helen cut my hair into her version of a “pixie cut” a few days before my 6th grade photo was taken and I vowed never to return to her chair. The day our photos were taken, the boy I had an inexplicable (because he was teeny tiny) crush on told me I looked like a boy in a dress.<\/p>\n
Right around that exact day, I began growing my hair out.<\/p>\n
My hair grew and grew and grew and grew. I hardly ever had to get it cut because that is the beauty of a) curly hair and b) the ’90s. You can let the hair overgrow, wear a plaid shirt and combat boots and you are Teh Sexay. Actually regardless of decade, I don’t think messy, unkempt hair in a 20-something is ever out of style. I dyed it a lot. Bleached it. Eventually cut it all off when I started swimming and couldn’t fit it under a cap. But then grew it back. Etc.<\/p>\n
But this past January is the first time I have gone to a haircutter and said, make it shorter. Make it into a short STYLE. Not just, take off 5 inches of overgrowth and leave me with shoulder-length hair, but take my shoulder-length hair and get it the hell off my shoulders. I am done with things on my shoulders.<\/p>\n
Psychology essay topics include: Maybe I am done hiding, am finally comfortable within my skin. Maybe I feel too overwhelmed by life to have anything other than my family’s well being resting on my shoulders. Maybe now that I am an old grey mare rather than a ripe filly, my mane is not so relevant so I feel free to forsake traditional femininity in favour of practicality.<\/p>\n
Or it could be that I only get a shower every other day and acres of hair is really hot and children are grabby little bastards.<\/p>\n
I am certainly no less vain than ever. I have been annoyed and complaining about my ugly, mushroom-shaped hair for three weeks now, since Bad Cut Day.<\/a> But when I went back to Original Janet<\/a> today (who, once again, was all alone in her salon, reading a magazine – you wouldn’t THINK she would be good at her job, but she really is) and said, hi, you cut my hair in January and I want you to do it again and she said, OK but I’ll have to go quite short at the back to make the front look better I said, oh yeah, sure, do it. I didn’t even blink. When I left the salon and shook my head like a Charlie’s Angel, I felt nothing, no wind in my locks, no locks in my mouth, no nothing, just my head, shaking back and forth, more like a dog with a bone, actually, and that made me happy.<\/p>\n And so I am done with my short hair childhood trauma. Just in time to start torturing my own children. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My short-hair fears started when I was a small child. For some reason, even though I was adorable with long hair, I was, one day, taken to my mother’s hairdresser and my hair was cut short. Maybe I had headlice? … Continue reading