Everything Looks Better in Sepia

So I got my hair cut on Easter Monday. I did the very thing that I promised myself in grade seven that I would never do again and I cut it above my shoulders. You see, the summer before I was to go into grade seven, I went to get my hair cut at one of those "aesthetics, learn to be a hairdresser" type places in Saskatoon with my mother. She happened to be getting her hair cut as well and without the guidance of my mother because she was in a different part of the salon as me, I cut my hair up to my jaw line at an angle so that I had a modified mushroom cut with a little brush cut part in the back. I would show you a picture but I refuse to post any picture of this as I am still to this horrified, nay, mortified at the sight of my school pictures that year. This was before I knew that I had curly hair and that it was never going to go away. Way before I had embraced it perhaps. (ie. if your mother does not have curly hair, she will not show the ways of the curl. She simply can never as she has not experience the joys and the sorrows of the curl.)

So, as I walked into the junior high school and met a teacher of mine whom I never before met and whom I had a bit of a crush on from then on, I was not only mortified at the state of my hair but also at the fact that he told me that the grade eights were meeting not in the gym but in the hallway. He thought I was older than I was because I was five foot ten by then. I had to correct him and say that I was not only in the right place as I was in grade seven but also that I was indeed in his class. We were both embarrassed. Thus, I have been growing out my hair from that day forward. Playing with the various long lengths you can have but never past the pivotal point of no return.
















** The beast in her natural habitat as well as in her high maintanance habitat. Like I said, everything looks better in sepia.**





When I went into the hairdresser's on Monday, I was feeling the winds of change blow through me (and my hair). I decided to go to a new stylist because I have not been terribly happy with the stylist that I currently have. I've been going to her for five years and she is always too cautious. She never cuts enough and probably for good reason as maybe I would have freaked out three years ago. So in a haste (and a need of change), I went to someone new. We discussed what I wanted which was a change and a "style" if you will but I am not sure I was prepared as I thought. She did a very nice job and I have been getting compliments on my hair for the last week or so but I don't know what to do with it. Maybe I never will. Goodness knows how many products I have used over the last five years. The countless numbers of hours thinking about how the girl who just walked by got her hair to do that and the number of times I have had to push away the hair straightener people in the mall because they love me and my hair and because they only do straighten a small chunk of hair in the back where they think it will be less noticable but really you end trying your hair back when you leave the kioske only because their demonstration is so short as they can't wait to leech onto the next sucker.

I guess in the end, I think I have lost some of my femininity. I have always been complimented on my hair even when I have felt bad about the rest of myself. I has been a big security blanket that I have literally been able to hide behind not to mention shut in the car door, blow outside the window, and endlessly have touched by friends, family and random people on the bus for the last ten years. I have always associated it with not only femininity in general but also my own femininity. Does short hair make me a man now? Probably not. I still have all the organs of a woman but I guess it will just take a little getting used to. And really, I wake up from one day to the next vacillating between loving and hating this stuff on my head. I'll probably love it tomorrow. Can't wait for tomorrow then...