Thursday Thirteen - Hair today, gone tomorrow

You know how some women buy new shoes when they want to update their wardrobe? Or the hipper ladies keep up with what’s fashionable and buy the latest “must haves” as soon as they hit the shelves. We women sure do like to express ourselves through our looks, don’t we? Can I totally bail on my feminista roots for a moment here and say: it’s because our appearance was all that mattered for so long. For hundreds of years women weren’t valued for their wisdom, their art, their poetry, their politics – hell we weren’t even allowed to be active in most of those things. It was a man’s world and we were just allowed to hang out in it, as long as we were perfumed, powdered, and wearing something flattering we were.

*An aside: can I take a moment to say how awesome I think these ladies were:

Susan B. Anthony, you outspoken biddy you – you rock!

Thank goodness ani wasn’t born while I was 15 or 16 – her name would have been Sojourner.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, bff with Ms. Anthony – proof that there may be good reasons for women to go to the bathrooms in pairs. Who knows – perhaps they planned the suffrage movement while passing toilet paper (pages of the Sears Roebuck catalog?) under stall doors.

*cough* Moving on, sorry ’bout that.

The way others are about shoes or purses? I was that way about my hair. I’m not going to go as far as saying I changed my hair as often as some people changed their shoes BUT I sure as hell did change it a lot. Usually my very drastic changes came at times of turmoil for me – moving, divorce, heartbreak, wreckage. In between the extreme alterations there were very gradual ones.

I spent this afternoon digging up photographic evidence of my hair fun and folly. Unfortunately – many of my photo albums were ruined from sitting in boxes in my garage for too long. You’ll have to trust me when I say – the rainbow has nothin’ on me.

So let’s start from the beginning:

1. I was a blondie when I was little.



Also? How awesome were those dangling pink feather earrings? ouch.

2. It turned dark strawberry blond by the time I hit high school. I had grown it out the longest I ever had it but hated dealing with the thick unruly locks. Also? It was the early 90′s – big, over processed, and fake was in. I wanted a part of that!

Can you believe I was 13 in this picture?

3. Remember that first big break up I mentioned in a previous post? From that came dabbling with bleach. Lots and lots of bleach.

I was determined to be a photojournalist for a few years and took several classes in media. This is leftovers form that time period – reading news to the high school during lunch break.

4. Playing with color seemed interesting. I wasn’t ready for something too shocking yet. I started with stripes. I wish I had pictures of all of those. I wasn’t such a camera whore back then. If I remember correctly I had green, orange, yellow, red, blue, purple, and black streaks in my hair while it was still pretty long.

5. I started hanging out with the “wrong crowd”. Time to chop it!

Wow, seriously, digging up all of these old pictures made me realize what a dork I was back then. I dressed like a total geek.

6. And go a little color crazy.

Darkest maroon I could dye it. This was the night Liz had a party at her house. “Party” for her crowd and for me meant two different things. I showed up drunk and they were all playing scrabble and staring at me with amazement. There are pictures from that party of me in three different outfits with three different hair colors. Came in blond, turned it green, left maroon.
(guess who got dumped by her long time crush that night? yup, the tri-colored drunky)

Blue was my favorite color. What can I say?
(I failed an important interview to receive a full ride scholarship to the University of Maine)
Happy little family photo. Don’t I look thrilled?
(moved to a new house)
Manic Panic, Atomic Turquoise
(quit my full-time job as a manager of a department store)
7. The rest of my senior year in high school trying to emulate Drew Barrymore in “Mad Love”.
She:
Me:
Yeah….I know. Nothing close.

My senior prom. I loved the big pouffy skirt but it had some glittery off the shoulder top that I hated. I stalled until the last moment and ended up tossing on a white shirt I had at home. The next year that was a very stylish look. Damn, always off by a year or ten.

8. Then there was some red:

My twin, former friend, and I.
(this change? brought on by my then-boyfriend trying to commit suicide and ending up in a mental ward)

mauve:

This guy? Not my boyfriend. His best friend was. We had returned a few days earlier from a spring break road trip to Michigan – boy pictured, his buddy, and I, and I heard that the boyfriend liked another girl and was planning on breaking up with me but didn’t know how to do it. I walked up to him at work and said (loudly, *blush*) “Since you don’t have enough balls to do this yourself – GO TO HELL.” My sister and “hell crew” (what my group of five female friends were dubbed that year) spent the rest of my senior year making the girl my ex-boyfriend desired pay. The poor shy thing – we made her cry every day after P.E. I apologized to her last year.
9. Until Ani was born my hair pretty much stayed the same. It didn’t take me long to figure out how much babies love to pull hair. And? Having a baby made me feel fat and frumpy. Off with it, I say! Off with it all.

This is Ryan, Ani’s dad.

Ani, age 1, chowing down. Me, sporting fire engine red locks. I was about to move to another state – only time I’ve ever lived away from my family.
10. By the time I left Ryan it was finally grown to my shoulders and almost natural except for some streaks. That lasted….um five months? Hey, that’s good for me!


People kept asking me if I was trying to look like Rogue. “X-men” had been released in theaters that year.
At which point I decided to go, for the first time ever, almost completely black.

Jason and I broke up. The Crash of ’04.

And then shorter.

Jason and I broke up. Again.

And then shorter.

I finally got divorced.

It had a few variations during that time. I’ll just list the boys’ names and make this shorter, mmkay?

Aaron, aka hot farmer boy who is now married.

Austin

BND (boy next door)

Jeff

11. Growing out that short ass black hair? Wowza. First, it took so much gumption. It got U-G-L-Y during some of those phases. Know what a mullet is? I sported one of those for a few weeks. I decided to bleach it to finally rid myself of the pesky black which resulted in orange hair for quite some time.





(my first date with J. awww)

The beginning of this summer.

12. Still working on growing it. But after nearly 16 years it’s finally my natural color again. Hmm. Never thought I’d see it. Sort of don’t like it. I promised myself I wouldn’t cut it until after Krispy’s wedding next summer. I have never had long hair for a formal event and I am determined to have some sort of style for once at this affair!!


(I look like hell today….it’s been a long week. pay no mind)
Right – now you might understand a little why I make a big deal about every stinking inch my hair grows and the natural color peeking out? Because it was boy short and pitch black two years ago!

13. Lastly, hairstyles from the shame hall of fame:

More terrible hair choices here.

Ah, well, we all choose a bad style once in awhile. See my above pictures as proof. And the fact that the link I put above to bad hair? One of those hairstyles looks suspiciuosly close to one I’ve had.
Hope I didn’t bore you this week and feel free to share you hair-story with me!
More Thursday Thirteen