I HATE my hair and want to chop it all off!!!! Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!! My 13-year-old daughter shrieked as she ripped bobby pins out of her hair and slammed out of the bathroom. Calm down, sweetie, it’s fine, I soothe. NO, it’s NOT! she responds in typical dramatic fashion. I smile at her histrionics and remember those days. A few minutes later she comes back in the bathroom and says to me, your hair looks good, Mom. What?? I say, no, no, no, it looks like CRAP right now. I haven’t even styled it yet! I would NEVER leave the house looking like this! Mom, you’re crazy, your hair looks fine, she says to me. She doesn’t see the irony of the situation. Haha!
I’ll say this about my hair. I want it to be pretty. I want it to make me feel pretty. And I always want it to make me feel sexy. Always. I don’t care about my nails, I don’t care about a tan. But my hair MUST be perfect. (Oh, I wish. It actually does what it wants when it wants and gives me fits every day.) And good hair makes me feel sexy. More than clothes or jewelry, and slightly more than makeup. Sexy hair and minimal makeup works. Good makeup and crappy hair doesn’t work AT ALL.
My relationship with my hair, and make no mistake, it is a relationship, can be pretty rocky at times. Three times in my life I’ve had short hair. I kept forgetting that I HATE my hair cut short. I was a senior in high school the first time I cut it short. I can’t remember WHY I cut my hair short, but I did. It wasn’t all that bad, but it just didn’t make me feel pretty. I was about 23 when I went into the salon and decided it would be “fun” to get an entirely new look. My stylist convinced me to go short. That’s the style these days, she reasoned. You’ll look so fashionable and up-to-date. Off went a good 12 inches of beautiful, dark chocolate brown curls (those were the days of permed hair, if you can remember that far back). Maybe more. It was all over the ground around me. Convinced I was going to look “soooo cute”, I was happy to see it all gone. For about two days, that is.
Fast forward about 15 years. I’m having a hormone induced fit about my hair. I can’t do anything with it. I have spent the last half an hour messing with it and it still looks crappy. It sucks. I HATE it and want to chop it all off!!!!! So I impulsively jump into the car and drive up the road to the no-appointment-needed salon. I plop myself down in the chair and say, I’m SICK of this hair. Chop it ALL OFF! After a dubious, are you sure? And me answering a decisive YES! My little stylist happily obliged. Those stylists can’t wait to get their evil little scissors into long hair. Snip, snip, snip, and my hair is short. Not as short as the last time (which in my hormonal fit I had completely forgotten about) but still, pretty darn short for me. Once again, it took about as long for me to regret it as it did for my PMS to go away. About two days. Then it took me three years to grow it out to an acceptable length. Since then I’ve kept it long. My advice to my daughter just the other day: Never, NEVER, EVER get your hair cut when you have PMS. You WILL regret it.
It’s really long now, it brushes just below my bra strap down my back. I just measured it and it’s 24 inches from crown to ends. My long hair makes me feel sensuous and sexy. My hair is like lingerie or sexy shoes. It’s much better, actually, because it’s something Conan absolutely LOVES. It makes me look and feel good. I like the feel of it brushing against my bare skin. It spreads invitingly out on a pillow. It falls, a feminine curtain, around my face. It pools on Conan’s stomach and thighs. It is just long enough to almost cover…
All right, enough about me. I think women want their hair to be sexy or sassy or cute or pretty, and if it is, we feel better about ourselves and that translates into feeling better sexually, too. I also think that our hair and how we take care of it says a lot about how we feel about ourselves in general. That’s just been my observation, of course, no scientific studies or anything, so feel free to completely disagree. I think a woman who likes her hair is more likely to like herself!
Now, what happens when our hair starts to turn gray? Most of us color it, some of us let it go. This has been bothering me for a couple years, now. I still have very little gray. In fact, it has just been this year that I can see it without picking through my hair to find the grays. For the last five years or so I’ve simply plucked out the few grays that grow in. When I found my first gray hair I screamed (literally) bloody murder and scared the crap out of Conan. He got extremely put out with me and told me never to do that again. I told him don’t worry, I wouldn’t, because my life was officially over and he might as well start digging my grave and kill me. (You don’t wonder where my daughter gets it anymore, do you?)
I may not be screaming anymore, but it is incredibly depressing to see those gray hairs. Blah. I’ve reached the point where I need to start coloring my hair. This whole business makes me feel extremely UN-sexy. Call me vain, shallow, narcissistic, I don’t mind, Conan’s been calling me those things for years, HA! I HATE that I’m getting older and getting wrinkles and gray hair. HATE IT! And I’m having to adjust my thinking about sex just a bit again. Oh, sure, I was pleasantly surprised at 40 when I didn’t shrivel up and die on the spot and my sex drive charged up like a Lamborghini, but NOW, what about being a gray-haired old lady grandma?
Oh, and why is it okay for men to go gray but not for women? Just a little graying at the temples hints at maturity, strength, character, and is just a bit sexy. On a man. Graying temples on a woman makes me think that woman has been neglecting herself, at the very least. Sexy it is NOT. Blah to that. (Sorry if that’s judgmental, it’s my one character flaw!) And OMG! What about gray hairs “down there”??? Gasp! Okay, that settles it, I’m bare for life or until I’m physically unable to de-hair myself anymore.
So I tried coloring my hair a couple years ago. What a horrible thing that was. I could tell it wasn’t the same color and it was a little bit red. I HATED it. Can you see all that redness on the ends?
Don’t get me wrong, I like red hair. It’s beautiful. On some one else! If you want to have red hair, natural or otherwise, go for it! But I DO NOT want red hair. My hair is chocolate brown. Dark chocolate brown. And I want to keep it that way. I am petrified of trying to color it again. If I want to get rid of that pesky gray hair I’m going to have to try again, though. SIGH. I suppose that any color is better than gray, so what am I crying about? I’m saying a long, drawn out goodbye to my youth, that’s what, and it isn’t pleasant.
How’s a girl supposed to feel sexy with wrinkles and gray hair? I don’t know yet. I do know one thing, I’m not going to let wrinkles and gray hair stop me from enjoying myself in bed, that is for sure. The days of denying myself and Conan pleasure because of my perceived flaws are loooooonnnng gone. I’ve learned that much over the years. No matter how we look or how old we get, we still want and need a good orgasm. Or two. Or more. 🙂 Gray hairs be damned.
It’s time to start shopping for a good color, I suppose.