It’s always hard to know how to wear your baby-fine hair when you’re aging and a bit overweight — OK, maybe more than a bit, but you get my drift — longer and inevitably pulled back (pre-granny) when you live in the balmy South in spring or chopped and layered at chin length.
One way,with it clipped back, you look a little like a pinhead from afar in comparison to your hips, but when bobbed of its length, you resemble a bowl head.
Anyway, I got a cut today, and my hair just didn’t do the usual perky rebound that past experiences promised. I wanted spunky but left with funky. As I walked my youngest home from school today, he said, “Cool, Mom, you got your hair cut. You look like Betty White.” In short, my hair got chopped and screwed.
Sigh. And that’s what happens when I let it air dry — it turns into a kinky wig-like helmet. But if I were to blow-dry it straight, it would be a shiny, smooth helmet.
Some days, you just can’t win with a new haircut. I’m afraid that the only time I’ll love how it looks is when I roll out of bed. I will admit that there are days that I look amazing with bedhead.
What’s really weird is I didn’t get curls until I turned 40, so the curls came in with the gray hairs. I would have savored these curls when I was young and frying my brain with perming solution, but curls don’t flatter an aging face in the same way as in youth. (You learn these morsels as you age, which makes the joke that much less funny.) All the same, a couple of years ago, curls started swirling out of nowhere, and my hair went akimbo. I’ve heard that it has something to do with slanting follicles or something, so it’s pretty obvious that my follicles are falling over as I age.
So here’s the other choice — go with the flow and let the curls show…
Because sometimes I don’t even achieve Betty White-ness, so I think my son was being generous. I mean, I love Bob Dylan’s style…but only on Bob Dylan.
I think the solution is to see aging hair as a kind of evolution. I’ll give this unruly haircut a day or so to calm down and maybe schedule it a playdate with the mirror on Friday. What I will not do is “repair it” as I have been known to do when a new haircut fails to wow me. I am one who thinks nothing of pulling out the ol’ scissors and having a go even at the back using two mirrors. It is a usually welcome challenge that I will resist for now, at least until my hair starts acting like itself again instead of like Betty White’s.
But there’s still that pleasure of washing a newly sheared mane in the morning. That’s the freshest feeling ever…that is, until it dries. And I have a whole two years to learn from this experience and grow my hair back out to the length it was to try this makeover all over again…maybe when I’m about 40 pounds lighter and feeling better.
Until then, I might as well have fun with growing out this bad bob and budget a little extra for DIY, creating some cute bobby pins and fun headbands, which are easy to find on Pinterest. The rest is patience, my friends, and a little attitude.
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