My Bad Hair

I have a hair appointment on Monday. I get my hair done every 6 weeks. I pay a lot for it, but I have finally found someone who I trust 1017% with my hair. Camille at Valhalla is awesome! I love what she does with the cut and color. It always looks good when she is done and the head/neck message I get is a bonus. I would feel comfortable telling her "Surprise me" and I'm sure I would love it when she was done.

You see, that hasn't always been the case. As a child of the late 70s and all of the 80s and into the 90s, I have been a victim of bad hair for 93.6% of my life. Let us illustrate with a few glorious examples. Please bear in mind that I also looked like a boy for while growing up (to the point where my older brother wrote in his 5th grade journal "I used to think my sister was a boy.") This has caused me to swear off ever having my hair super short again, despite the fact that I am blessed enough in other areas that no one is going to think I am a male, at least not from the front.

Let's start with a good hair example- 1978, a precocious child in Abilene, TX. Not yet stubborn enough to refuse Mom's attempts to do my hair. Holy cow- I was cute!


Then we skip a few years to preschool in Hawaii. This is about the point when a neighbor's husband started calling me Fred, a nickname which stuck until I was 18 and is still brought out occasionally.


Third grade- I'm pretty sure that if you stare at this picture long enough, you will start to hear "The hills are alive..." Feathered hair- totes 1984.


Okay, I have no idea what happened to me in 4th grade. I can imagine Mom and I having a discussion where I insisted I was old enough to do my own hair for picture day. Sadly, I was not. The man shirt doesn't help.


Let's skip a few years of feathered hair, bad hair & braces, even worse short hair. Yes, let's go on to 1994, junior year of high school. I actually like my hair in this one. It almost makes up for the debacle of my 8th, 9th and 10th grade years. Someday, when I am feeling more confident, I will post those pictures. Either that, or when I determine I have no shame.


Then, in 1995, I made the follicularly fatal mistake of cutting my hair super short right before my brother's wedding. I looked like I was my mom's older sister and I'm sure people figured I went and got my hair set and colored every two weeks with my friends Gladys and Myrtle. I will never do that again.

I struggled through college, mission, etc. with my hair. It changed colors and styles every few months. In college, I fluctuated between weird-ish perms and flippy styles where I would pick a different color for the underneath of my hair. I have some natural curl and lots of body in my hair- enough to make it obnoxious but not enough to make it cute.

But then I moved to Millville, found Camille and started to like my hair. And now, even though I have to dry my hair, then straighten it and THEN style it, it is worth it! But my style is still flexible enough so that if I feel like scrunching it, I can. I felt good about my hair when I had a mom come up to me at church on Sunday and tell me that her daughter asked to have her hair fixed like mine!