Friday, May 23, 2008

What has been done to your hair???

Warning: extremely superficial subject

"Ok hon, what'll it be?" sez Tony, the Vietnamese haircutter who chops and shapes faster than lighting, and also owns 3 large salons named for him.
"I need a change. I think shorter."

And thus began my bad hair day, which has so far turned into 21 bad hair days. Not that Tony did a bad job, but I think it's more because I can't figure out what to do with the beast. My hair seems to have a mind of its own.

As if it weren't awful enough, losing fistfuls every time I shower or brush through it, since I'm in the shedding phase of post-pregnancy, I had to go and eliminate even more of the fine, thinning, wisps. (Bangs again? What was I thinking??) Hair is truly my achilles' heel of my appearance anyway, so it's always been the #1 thing I would change. I know for others it might be complexion, weight, nose, whatever, but for me it's been the baby soft haze on the top of my head, which clings to my face, refuses to grow longer than my shoulders, flips the wrong way, and has a slight and irregular wave which makes it not straight and not curly.

Even as a grade-schooler, I just tried to pretend it wasn't there, clip it into a barrette, or push it back with a plastic headband. I still remember when my brother Bruce was idly playing with one during family council and broke it, so I burst into tears, as this was the Last of the Plastic Headbands. He felt so bad about it that he contributed a generous portion of his masking-tape-ball collection to "repair" it. Of course it looked ridiculous, but the joke of it helped me get over the loss.

Being a low-maintenance girl, it's just plain annoying to have to do something with it that takes longer than 5 seconds after I get out of the shower. I'm willing to spend maybe 6 or 7 minutes on it if the result is good, but so far I have not been that lucky. Woe is me! Thankfully, it will eventually grow, and this subject will stop taking up valuable and quickly depleting brain space...