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My Life in Hair: A One Act

    From long to short, from head to toe, I present MY LIFE in HAIR, MY HAIRSTORY!

    Scene 1: 1974; 6 pounds, 13 ounces OF HAIR

    Scene 2: No More Tears – Half a bottle of conditioner, one small girl

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    Scene 3: Under the bubble dryer the acoustics are excellent!

    Scene 4: Off With Her Braids, On With The Bowl – From Fraggle to Hamill

     

    BowlCut

    Scene 5: If You Perm it, They Will Laugh

    Scene 6: Tales of a Fourth Grade Hairy Lou Retton

    Scene 7: Wedges Are For Lettuce

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    Scene 8: Orange Is The New Blonde – When neither lemon nor Sun-In suffice (go for the strong stuff in your step-mom’s closet and let it sit for a couple of hours under a lamp. Results include humiliating conversations about self-esteem with Mr. Benson in homeroom).

    Scene 9: Long and longer! How Growing a High School Hair Curtain Wins You and Crystal Gayle Friends and Admirers.

    HairCurtain

    Scene 10: Flip it. Flip it Good – Excuse my glossy hair crest sweeping the pencil off your desk tray, Graham who sat behind me in geometry.

    Scene 11: Parlez Vous BraidsFrancais? – Why does this French Braid make me look like an egg? When will the feeling return to my arms? How obvious is it that I’ve been crying over my freakish head in the girls room on a scale of 1 to 10?

    Scene 12: The Bob Years – My loss of peripheral vision

    photo by Suzanne Plunkett
    photo by Suzanne Plunkett

    Scene 13: Caeser is for Salad – How come Winona looks like a pixie and I look like a cotton swab?

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    Scene 14: Post-Baby Shag, Fruma Sarah DoRag – “Let’s experiment with headscarves! It looked okay in Fiddler!”

    Scene 15: Banged – Those tricky bastards.

    Scene 16: Follicle Chronicles – From Nair to Electrolysis to Laser and back to Hominid

    Scene 17: Midlife Proves Long and Layered, so Too The Hair – It works. I’m exhausted. Whatever.

    HalloweenMask

    Scene 18: Ready, Set, (rain bonnet) GO! No muss, no fuss, get on the elder tour bus.

    (HAIR) CURTAIN

    ***

    Some of my other pals are hairblogging today:

    The Flying Chalupa

    Good Day, Regular People

    Midlife Mixtape

    Smacksy

    Up Popped a Fox

    19 thoughts on “My Life in Hair: A One Act”

    1. This was so much fun. SO glad you went with some photos because that is where the fun is. Of course, the brilliance is in the writing, but the fun, in these pictures. Flip it real good, Ann.

    2. Ann–This was funny, as I could identify with most of your scenes/phases, except for the ones involving lovely curtains of hair.

      I think about this often, as I NEVER have a good hair day. Some days, it’s not quite as hideous as others. But having a day when I’m pleased by my hair–both sides and the bangs and the back?

      No way.

    3. The pixie. That is all.

      I want to do that hair talk! It would be the only time I’d share the photographic evidence of my Harry Potter hair back in 1998. And now I’ve morphed into Hagrid.

      Off to read more about everyone’s hair.

    4. I love reading and seeing these….plus your commentary was brilliant (as expected)

      You’re beautiful,,,every inch and every style. 🙂

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    6. 1. We had the same bowl cut!
      2. You win with the Crystal Gayle reference. I was just talking about her hair the other day with some friends.
      3. I’m so glad you included the pictures 🙂

    7. I love the theme that is emerging on these: minute calibrations of our follicles in our youth giving way to “I’m middle aged, just do something with it so I can get back to my life.”
      Hard to pick but “(Results include humiliating conversations about self-esteem with Mr. Benson in homeroom)” is the one I’ve highlighted on my computer screen, like a streak of Sun-In across the monitor.
      xoxox

    8. I went into convulsions just reading the title as my daughter talks non-stop about her hair to the point where I’m ready to shave it off. I adore my kid, but OMG, how much can one say about one’s hair and we’re not talking about over a period of time.

    9. The pixie! I did it, too–when Halle Berry and Charlize Theron went super short. Alas, in order to carry off that style, you have to look like Halle Berry or Charlize Theron. Dangit.

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