Booty Dish Syndicate: Beauty Gone Wrong Week
Funny how most folks have issues with.... hair! Our next guest blogger is no exception! Stephanie writes for Blither, Blather, Bloviate. Please visit her blog and say Hey when you are doing reading about her.... hair!
Confetti'd and Spaghetti'd - A Tale of Longing and Acceptance
by, Stephanie Alford
Every summer when I was a kid, mom would take me to a beauty shop and have my hair cut off. She called it a "pixie" cut. Looking at the pictures now, I think I look like a dork. But it was an annual tradition and it didn't ever occur to me to tell her I wanted something different. Like most things in my life, I just went along because that's what good girls do.
Until one summer when the air was muggy, and the Mighty Mississip' rolled past our new small town. We had just moved for the jillionth time in my young soon to be 6th grade life. "Hannibal" didn't mean anything to me. Neither did "Boyhood home of Mark Twain." Becky Thatcher and Tom Sawyer? Them, I knew.
At the time, downtown Hannibal, MO was festooned in a tourist attraction of a museum and shops based on the imaginary characters of Mark Twain. Not so imaginary were the teenagers chosen to play the parts of Tom and Becky. Somewhere in the archives, is a picture of me wearing green flowered denim shorts and a pixie haircut that is reaching that awkward growing out stage. I was thin, shy and awkward and that awkwardness comes screaming through at me from a picture taken that summer, standing next to Tom and Becky.
Inside were rooms designed to look like scenes from Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. The only thing I remember was the mannequin dressed as Becky Thatcher. She wore a long blue gingham dress and a full-length white apron. But what I remember the most is the hair. This mannequin had long yellow hair, in braids that reached her ankles. Right then and there, I knew I wanted hair that long.
School pictures over the succeeding years show an awkward girl with thick glasses and long, fine hair. My wish for braids that reached my ankles stopped at my behind, I could sit on my hair but it just wouldn't grow any longer. I would wistfully look at pictures of Crystal Gayle, a popular country singer and sigh. Her hair was at her ankles, why wouldn't mine grow any longer?
Through hairballs in the laundry and on the carpet, (GIR once extracted a rather long hair from a sock he was wearing and asked, "This belong to you?") I kept it long. I would have the bangs cut but the rest stayed long. My new dream became having wavy hair.
In the 1980's, I lived in Albuquerque and worked for a large TV/Radio station combo. Their company parties were dress-up affairs in a nice hotel. I decided this was the perfect opportunity to go all out and have my hair done. Hours and over $100 later, the department store salon had curled and styled my hair so that it was wavy and, I thought, quite fetching. The stylist had also used so much product that it took several showers to get it all out. Once more, my hair was long and straight.
In 1991, I tried again. My bangs were short but my hair was still very long and I still craved curly hair, so I went to the salon and paid for a perm. This only made my bangs go Shirley Temple curly but left my hair almost as straight as before. Still, I stuck to my dreams of long, wavy hair.
Then one day, I got fed up. If it had to be straight, I now wanted it to be a more manageable length, so I got it cut to just below my shoulder blades. Friends were surprised asking "why?" I could only shrug and say, "Because." Every summer, I would go in and have it cut to that same length. During those years, I had a platinum streak to cover the awkward growing out stage of really short bangs. I kept the streak for a few years and had blonde highlights added. I was cool and hip. I might be in my 40's, but I fit right into my high-tech environment.
Even after I got laid off in 2001, I kept the length and the highlights, experimenting with various colours of blonde and effects. I looked in the mirror and remembered the dreams of ankle-long hair, wavy hair and wondered what to do with it. The platinum streak was a thing of the past, the highlights were growing out and I no longer had the time or the desire to put that much effort into upkeep.
As I grew more accepting of myself, I grew more accepting of my body and my long straight hair. The summers got warmer. (Warm? Who am I kidding? They got hot!) I now pinned my hair up or wore it in a high ponytail to keep it off my neck and out of the way while I worked. Oh, and there was the strangling.
I have developed a very active form of sleeping in which I toss and turn like a whirling dervish. My hair would get wrapped around my neck, so not only was I waking myself up with nearly every turn, I would wake up enough to unwrap the hair from around my neck. What to do, what to do?
Change is good. As a student and a temporary worker, my life is in constant flux. I looked in the mirror and wondered, "What would my hair look like if it was even shorter?" Graduation from one of the local community colleges and all the above reasons came into a confluence. I walked into my hairdresser and said, "Cut it. Cut it to just above my shoulders." And when asked why and was I sure, I replied, "Because. Yes, I'm sure." This is the result. And, I like it!
No more wishing for something I can't have. It's not spangled and spaghettied nor do I wish it to be. It's definitely my hair though. Acceptance is good too.
11:45:37 AM 
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