Chopped

It's a New Year, a new decade, and time for a new 'do. I've worn my hair long for the last 2 years but on December 22nd, I chopped it ALL off.

Before:

The only picture I could find of myself with my hair down, circa April 2010.
Even had old glasses! And a super huge pout for some unknown reason.

After:

And now, let's talk about my historical love/hate hair affair.

I've had a love/hate relationship with my hair ever since I was a wee one. As a small child I hated having my hair brushed or my scalp touched (I still freak out a little when people touch my head). As my mom and Aunt Kay would say, I was tender-headed. I'm pretty sure I single-handedly kept Johnson's Detangler on the drugstore shelves in my town. I practically went through a bottle a week as a kid.

My first haircut was when I was 4, in Charleston, South Carolina, at a beach house that no longer exists. (Hurricane Hugo washed it out to sea in 1989.) My Aunt Kay cut my hair. I remember it taking something like 3 hours, but that is small child memory sense of time, so in reality, it was probably like 20 minutes. My hair was down to my butt at the time and shorn down to a respectable level just below my shoulders.

I wore bangs throughout elementary school (who didn't? It was the late 80s/early 90s - it was as natural as slap bracelets and jelly shoes) but didn't really take the plunge until 8th grade. That's when I went for the Dana Scully-esque bob cut. Unfortunately, I wasn't exactly a hair styling pro, so it never quite looked that cool. (Remember, cool is being used as a relative term to the mid-90s awesomeness of the X-Files at that time). Still, I was practically beaming for my eighth grade portrait.

I grew it out through high school and then got it cut sometime senior year. It had to have happened after senior portraits were taken (as my hair was just past my shoulders) but sometime before I started college, as there are early college pics of me with my hair growing out. I have only a few pictures of that haircut while it was fresh: it was an incredibly short haircut and it wasn't done very well.

Around my 21st birthday, I lopped off my hair again. There is a very awkward picture of me holding up my brand new license (that's right, didn't get my license until college) with my brand-new haircut. In retrospect, the haircuts themselves weren't necessarily bad... I just had no idea how to style them. I grew out my hair again, graduated, moved in with my boyfriend, started working in the real world, got engaged, and got married. I was terrible about getting my hair trimmed regularly and always kept it long. Right after we got married, I did what every single one of my married lady friends did post-wedding: I chopped it all off since I had grown it long for the wedding. I mistakenly went for the oh-so-2008-what-was-I-thinking style "pob" - the reverse angled bob cut made popular by Victoria Beckham - after the stylist assured me it was an easy style to manage.

Lies. I couldn't wait to get my hair trimmed back to one length and growing it back out as that hairstyle was a nightmare to maintain.

I never really got into the whole "doing my hair" thing, contrary to my Southern New Jersey upbringing. Styling meant I added hairspray or added a barette. For the last few years, I had 3 hairstyles: ponytail, bun, or tossed up in a hair claw. It is a RARE day indeed when I would wear my hair down. Just before the New Year, on a bonus day off, I decided to take the plunge and go pixie.

Granted, I have to "style" my hair every day and it's still a learning process. I still haven't achieved the same "just styled" look right out of the salon, but I'm okay with that. The styling process takes about 5 minutes in the morning so I'm not too overwhelmed. (Mostly it's towel-drying, adding some anti-frizz cream, parting my hair and smoothing it all down. I rarely blow dry my hair.)

Other pros of the pixie cut:
1. No more random long shedded strands stuck to my clothes.
2. No more balling up my hair and throwing it over the pillow when I go to sleep at night.
3. Less shampoo consumption (Never realized how much shampoo I used until that first hairwash post haircut.)
4. More opportunities for adorable hats and dangly earrings.
5. No more getting my hair caught in ____ (doors, seatbelts, jackets, under my husband's arm when he puts it around my shoulder, cats' teeth).

I've had this cut for just over 2 weeks now and I love how easy it is and how I look. It's a nice change of pace. The day I got it cut, I splurged with some Hanukkah money I'd been holding onto and a clothing store gift card from my mom. I got my hair cut, bought me some new duds, and then dropped- oy, I'm embarrassed to admit how much I spent- $128 on makeup at Sephora. I'm usually a Cover Girl/Maybelline sort of gal, but it felt nice to spend money on some really nice (if a bit overpriced) makeup. I needed to replace everything anyway as it was all  at least a couple of years old, plus I had to throw out all of my eye makeup when I got a bad stye in December. And now I've made a commitment to actually getting up, styling my hair, and putting on makeup in the morning (lol, of course except for today. The hair is a must but there was no time for makeup this morning).

Larry has been in awe of this super new girly-girl wife of his.

I admit, it's a big change for someone who, for the past 5 or 6 years never regularly wore makeup; makeup was reserved for special occasions only. But it feels nice just to take some time for myself, doll up my face and hair, and walk out the door feeling good about the way I look.