Random thoughts on hair (or the lack of it)

So, the quintessential idea of feminity in hair is this....long, flowing locks.  We are conditioned as little girls watching Disney movies that princesses are beautiful and have long, abundant, shiny hair! Probably at some point in your life you've dreamed of having long, beautiful Pantene hair. The hair that's shiny, slightly wavy, full of bounce.  Hair that causes men to come back for a second appreciative glance.  We buy the hair products, the highly-touted shampoos, the volumizing conditioners in attempts to reach hair nirvana.  Naturally curly-headed women seek to tame those curls or straighten them out.  Straight-haired women want curls or bounce (remember the perm?).  Our hair, and subsequently our hairstyle, says a lot about us.  You can usually tell by a womans hair if she is high maintenance or laid back.  A mom or a lawyer.  A religious adherent to long hair or a fashion-magazine-reading celebrity wannabe.  And some of us spend a good portion of our adult lives trying to find that one hairstyle that we love enough to keep forever.

I have been the teenage girl getting up at 5am to hotroll her hair EVERY MORNING before school; the girl who permed her hair for years in an attempt at volume and body, the woman who tried to cut her own hair 3 weeks before her wedding and had to get it cut into a short bob as a result of that attempt (no wedding updo here), the mom-on-the-go with the overgrown bob, the "cool" mom with the assymetrical bob (until someone said I looked like Kate Gosselin....that ended that hairstyle really quickly!), and a hundred styles inbetween.  Always searching, never satisfied.  Thinking the next big celebrity haircut, the next expensive product, the next razor cut style would give me what I wanted....perfect, feminine, classy hair. 

Can you be feminine without flowing hair that reaches your shoulders, back or waist?  Is your femininity tied up in how long or short you keep your hair?  Some men would answer with a resounding "yes"!  Since I believe that our femininity springs from the inside and not the outside, then I would have to disagree with most men.  You can be feminine with long hair, short hair, curly hair, straight hair, brunette hair....and you can be feminine with no hair.  But so often, the attractiveness we feel as women is tied to our hair.  The problem comes for those of us for whom the ideal of long flowing hair will never be reality outside of a wig.

My hair is very fine (it feels like a baby's hair), has very little natural body, and is also very thin.  You can see my scalp clearly where my hair parts and my scalp gets sunburned quite easily.  I also have a very nice, big cowlick on the back of my head at the crown that makes the hair swirl away and looks like a big bald spot (yes, Mom, I've asked the hairdresser repeatedly and it's not a bald spot, it's a cowlick).  For most of my life I have hated my hair and attempted to change it.  As I got older it got darker so I highlighted it or colored it blonde.  It's naturally frizzy so I put smoothing balm all over it resulting in excess oil (did I mention it's also naturally oily?).  I permed it to give it body and destroyed the natural texture.  I parted it on a different side to try to cover my cowlick.  Never satisfied, always changing. I literally got a new hairstyle almost every time I went to the salon and spent a fortune on highlights over the years.  All attempts to grow it back out (after the self-haircut debacle before my wedding), which were an effort to please my husband and his preference for long hair, resulted in limp, thin hair that didn't feel like me....and then I'd get it cut into a bob once again.  Until last year.  That was the end of my quest for long, wavy, blonde hair.  With my husband's grudging acceptance, I cut it off.....all the way off....as in a short pixie cut with my natural medium brown hair.  The horror!  Where did my femininity go?  Did I feel less like a "woman"?  No, actually after I got used to it, I felt like "me"....simple, streamlined, preppy, easy.  Like I wasn't struggling to overcome the fact that God didn't give me great hair.  It was freeing.  Most women think it's chic....most men probably hate it.  That's OK.  I'm working with what God gave me, to the best of my ability, and am finding contentment along the way.

Here are a few tips I've discovered throughout the years of my own, and others, hair struggles.

1.  Short hair doesn't have to be masculine hair.  I hesitate to recommend super short hair for women who eschew makeup and jewelry.  Unless you have pixie-type features, you'll need to primp a bit to offset the shortness of the haircut.   Short hair draws attention to your face and super-short hair even more so. Make sure that face looks nice.  For me, that necessitates at least a bit of makeup (hello, acne and scars) and I wear earrings 24-hours a day.  It's usually enough to offset the potential masculinity of my super-short hair.  Also, buy some sunglasses in a feminine shape.  Although I love the classic aviator sunglasses, with my hair I look more like Tom Cruise ala Top Gun instead of the chic woman I'm trying to be!

2.  Medium length hair needs to be trimmed - often.  Ladies think that if they get a chin or shoulder-length bob that life will be easy and haircare will be streamlined and that is the case....for a few weeks.  But that bob begins to lose it's perfect, swingy shape very quickly as it grows out. If you want that medium-length hair to appear fresh keep up with haircuts at regular intervals, depending on your own hair's rate of growth.

3.  Some women can't have nice looking long hair.  I'm sorry, but it's true.  Those of us with thin or fine hair have almost no chance of looking decent with very long hair.  It looks stringy and wispy after a while.  Women with extremely thick, course or wiry hair also have a hard time with long hair.  Be realistic about what God gave you and find a good hairdresser who knows the best way to cut/style your type of hair.  On a side note, these types of hairdressers are usually not found at the strip mall next to Kroger....but it also doesn't mean you have to pay $75 for a haircut. Shop around and get recommendations from ladies whose hair you admire.  Don't be too shy to ask someone who does her hair....she'll take it as a great compliment!

4.  Don't fight too hard against what God gave you.  Notice I said "too hard".  If you have gorgeous naturally curly hair, it's going to be a royal pain (or very expensive) to straighten it every single day for the next 20 years.  But it's awfully fun to do straight hair every now and then to freshen up your look, or for a special occasion.  If your hair is stick straight, curling it each and every day may be unreasonable....but for a special occasion, feel free to break out the hairspray and hot rollers.  The point is that if we continually fight against our hair, we can never accept it and learn to embrace it the way God made it!

Nothing super informative or thoughtful today.  I just hope that each of us, as women, know deep inside that whether our hair is thick or thin, blonde or brunette, curly or straight, or gone altogether we are no more or less feminine because of it's presence or style.