Brought To You By The Letter Q

A few months ago, I cut several inches off my hair.

Many, many inches.

It was time. I figured if I hated it, it'll grow back. This was inconceivable just a few years ago. I spent most of my life with long hair, and suffered under the delusion that if I cut it, it might never grow again. Or I might die from lack of follicle. Crazy shit like that.

Anyway.

Six inches less later....and I loved it. It felt liberating. So at the next appointment, I had a few more inches knocked off.

I shouldn't have tempted fate.

My hairstylist/hairdresser/hairartist - whatever they're called these days, is great. Really. This is the only salon I've stayed with for more than two years, and I've been completely happy the entire time.

Until now.

I decided to go with one of those neat angled bobs - short in the back, long in the front. The Anti-Mullet.

She cut, dried and straightened my hair. It looked great. Then she used the thinning shears. Who knows why - I thought it looked fine. Afterwards it just looked...wrong.

Stupidly, I figured I needed to style it myself, and it would be fine. Don't we ladies always do that? We convince ourselves it'll be fine once we “fix it” at home.

Um...no.

The full impact didn't hit til I tried to do my hair the next day. Somehow, the angle was lost, and it looked like a standard, straight bob, except for two looooong chunks on either side of my face. They swooped out from my head like tentacles.

From the side, I looked like the letter Q.

I went back in for an emergency appointment, with the excuse I was apparently too hair-challenged to style it like that everyday, and asked if she could just even it up. Which, of course, the only way to fix that is to remove more hair.

So yeah. It's short. It's also pretty. I'm mature enough to handle the new look and still feel damn good about myself.

Still, I think the experiment is over.

It'll grow back.

Bad Hair Of Youth

I grew up in the 70s and 80s when huge, bad hair was the norm. When I say bad, I don't mean Michael Jackson “Bad”. I mean really, really dreadful.

It all started with Farrah Fawcett's trend setting “feathered” hairstyle. It looked great. On her. You see, Farrah's hair wasn't stiff and weirdly shaped. Somehow when this style translated to the rest of us, it morphed into solid tubes of hair. Here's my depiction of that glorious 'do:

Here in Northeast Pennsylvania, we took this to another level:

1.) Begin by getting a curly perm, then blow it out with a round brush to get a whoosh of feathers.

2.) Spray with Aquanet.

3.) Set curling iron on High. Proceed to curl the feathers into giant rolls. Repeat until you get the perfect roll, or your hair begins smoking.

4.) Spray with Aquanet.

5.) Slowly brush hair from the back end of the curl tube, moving horizontally, pulling the tube of curls to the back of your head.

6.) Spray with Aquanet.

Usually we concentrated so much on perfecting the sides, that we neglected the back. Sometimes it left a big, flat spot back there - which made the sides even more wing-like. Or the side curls circumnavigated the entire head, leaving the back looking like a cross between Darth Vader's helmet and a duck's bottom.

So in an attempt to make my hair do the impossible, I had split ends, bad perms and crunchy hair. I also drove my parents insane with the amount time it took to perfect this look each morning. Thankfully, I learned my lesson about 20 years ago.

What goes around comes around.

Now I know how my parents felt, and how ridiculous the entire styling process was. I get to see it every morning when my own daughter gets ready for school.

She just loves that flat iron.