You guys, I’m really going through something right now. It could end disastrously. I can hear you all now, giving me pep talks and reassurances, in my head:
This is completely normal.
Every woman has those thoughts now and again.
Honey, give it a week. You’ll change your mind.
Remember last time? You really regretted it.
For the love of pickles, think of your cheeks!
That’s right. I’m bored with my hair.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. How can you possibly be bored with your straight-as-a-two-dollar-bill mousy brown hair? Woman pay good money to have hair that hangs like wet spaghetti.
I know, I’m ashamed of myself. But I can’t help it, I’m booooorrrrreeeeeed.
Okay, so a little back story:
I have had every haircut known to womankind, save for a perm (I was too young for that 1980′s tomfoolery). Well, that and the pixie. Even I, a hair experimenter extraordinaire, know that a pixie will look hideous on my ginormous head with my prominent nose and fluffy cheeks. No, I am not exaggerating; I have the largest head in the free world. Think Albert Einstein, or maybe Charlie Brown. I have a bigger hat size than Jack Nicholson.
But other than that, I’ve had it all. The shag. The Marcia Brady. Zoe Deschanel’s bangs. The bob. The bob with bangs. The long bob. The asymmetrical bob. The short shag. The bowl. The Rachel. The Ross (just kidding).
My hair has been brown, auburn, blonde, green, red, copper, and for one unfortunate summer, orange. The only two colors I’m afraid to try are platinum blonde (I’m too lazy for that kind of upkeep), and black (because I’m afraid that with my pasty skin and lack of eyebrows it will make me disappear).
My hair isn’t even that bad right now. I’m growing out a haircut I regretted, and I just went back to brown after being red for a few months, so it looks moderately normal.
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To answer all your questions: yes I’m really that pale, no I’m not wearing makeup, yes my favorite sweater looks like an item from Bill Cosby’s closet, yes that is a stained glass unicorn in the window, and yes I like to keep my office looking “eclectically busy.”
See? It doesn’t look that bad. I can put it in a ponytail when it annoys me (which is everyday). My husband is thrilled that I’m growing it out. He’s not a Neanderthal that prefers his women to be long-haired blondes barefoot in the kitchen, he just married a girl who had long brown hair for the ENTIRE TEN YEARS they dated, so change is hard for him. The last time I came home with a haircut, his first words to me were, “I hate it.”
Wait, did I just say I had the same haircut for ten years? Natalie, how does that compute when you just said a few paragraphs prior that you had every haircut known to man?
Well, little field mice, both are true. I had every terrible haircut under the sun in my teen years, then suffered from a combination of having one bad haircut too many and no longer being able to afford to go get it cut in my twenties. Heck, I couldn’t even afford a five dollar box of Nice ‘n Easy. So long, brown, straight hair is what I had when I met Mike, when I married Mike, and up until I hacked it off a few months after we got married.
Truthfully, long brown hair is what looks best on me. But I get bored. I get antsy. I think to myself, “Maybe I can finally pull off this wavy chin-length bob,” even though my hair is not wavy.
Then I always regret it, because I don’t like spending more than two minutes on my hair a day. Even when I do bust out a blow dryer or maybe rescue my curling iron from storage, I lack the patience to see a style through to the end. I get halfway done, get frustrated, pin it up and call it a day.
So I’m putting up some pictures to remind myself why I don’t need to do anything at all to my hair except leave it alone.
This is what I look like with bangs. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson, but sadly no, this is not the last of my attempts at having bangs.
Note the bangs with trapezoidal shoulder length cut, to accentuate my round face. I am thirteen here, not a 40-year-old soccer mom.
The first of many shags, unfortunately. I dyed it green not long after this.
This is what happened when I went to the salon and requested a “Drew Barrymore” look. Not quite what I had in mind. And stop pointing out that I was the tallest fourteen year old in the history of the universe.
This is what the cut looked like pre-styling, so basically, all the time.
I had to include this photo. It’s my favorite.
My sophomore photo was so terrible that there is no photographic evidence of it outside of my yearbook, which is in storage in the attic. Instead, I am including this placeholder photo of what my hair looked like at the time.
Imagine this in a lovely dirt-brown shade complemented by a corpse-like complexion, and you’ll be pretty close.
See, here! Here! My hair is okay. Sure I’m growing out a color job, but it looks fine. Why couldn’t I leave well enough alone? Sigh. Not long after this photo was taken…
Junior prom, circa 2000. My date was such a nice guy he didn’t even point out that a mane of tight barrel curls was on its way out. Also, note the repeat of a trapezoidal shape.
After this beauty disaster, I grew out my hair and it didn’t change much for ten years.
If only I could bottle and sell whatever made my hair look this good that day.
That was it. For ten years. Until I got married, got full-time work, and finally a enough money to be “creative” with my hair. “Creative” is code for doing shit to it that should not be done to hair when you have chubby cheeks and a Roman nose.
Thankfully though, I think this slideshow has served its purpose. The existence of zero photos of me when my hair looked bad last year proves that I should leave well enough alone.
