Hair

Ready for another rant which happens to be pretty inane, comprised of nothing and tends to make no sense have no definitive conclusion whatsoever? Well too bad. You're getting one anyway. Today's rant is brought to you by my hair, which happens to hate me. I just happen to have the sense enough to hate it back.

I have issues with my hair. Actually, I think my hair has issues with me, deep-seated issues that not even couples therapy can solve. And I know where it started too. It's my mother's fault really (Hi Mom! It's really not. You didn't over crisp my hair and burn my ear that time. That was all a bad dream. Really! I don't need any guilt trips! Really). For whatever reason, my mother had no actual experience with managing and taming a child's hair, so up to the age of eleven or so it ran wild, like a feral cat (and probably looked much the same). At about that time, I committed the heinous act of forcing the spiked mullet on my hair. My hair stopped talking to me after that. After committing further atrocities against my hair, totaling three perms and a shag hair cut, during my mispent youth, it's pretty much declared all out war. I can't say I blame it much.

But we've tried to come to terms with each other, not an all out truce mind you, but a cease-fire. I provide it with frequent brushings, frequent washings, and decent enough stylings, and it repays me by trying to keep the tangling to a minimum. I take it to see Sabrina every 10 weeks (which it LOVES! I don't know if Sabrina lulls it, or beats it into submission or subconciously bonds with it. but it does fabulous things for her that it would snarl at doing for me. I swear, the last time I went in for a cut and a style, I head it purring. Scout's Honor.). If it doesn't hate me too much in a given month, I don't threaten it with 'The Sinead' (It knows I'll never do that and I know I'll never do that, but it's a last resort tactic). I don't force it into any ridculous coifs and it has provided me with three modes at which it comfortably agrees to. These are the terms of our cease-fire.

But I'm finding the three modes a little less agreeable as of late. I don't know if it's because my hair is getting longer and therefore less willing to agree to said modes or if I'm finally no longer under the dillusion that said modes are 'stylish', 'retro' or otherwise. Maybe It would help if I explained my hair's three modes:

1. The Nerdy, Yet Sexy, Librarian - This happens to be the one and only up do I can manage comfortably. It's either a messy bun in a pony tail or my hair bursting out of a hair clip in a cascade. Either way, picture something that you can comfortably stick a pencil in. It has things to recommend it, like the fact that I think it plants a seed in Fighting Nun's head that I could throw the clip off and start twirling my hair around like I was rejected for the lead in the Hot for Teacher video, which makes him just a little panty and drooly. Make of that what you will.

The issue with that do now is that my hair is getting long, and I'm keeping it in the bi-layer cut, and so the hair in the front comes out of the clip or ponytail and just kind of lingers there on the sides of my face, being a general nuissance. It's less Hot For Teacher and more frazzled school marm, which blech. Fighting Nun kinda likes the messy hair coming out of the bun, but it kinda drives me nuts. Operative word: Kinda.

2. The Molly Ringwald AKA The Claire - This is what I call my hair when I blow dry it. OK, I actually don't have the cut or the color for my hair to officially look like Molly Ringwald's in the Breakfast Club, which, as far as I'm concerned, is a good thing, because if I had those bangs, I'd kick my own ass. But when my hair is straight and down, my hair tries to emulate that frizzy, yet at the same time feathery look Molly had going on in the movie. I'm not sure why. Maybe I watched Breakfast Club too many times during my formative years (and/or now) and it just figures that it happens to be what I'm going for.

Now that it's getting longer, it's sadly decided that it's less Molly and more Ally Sheady, which I absolutely have no idea how to compute. If I wanted to look like a frizzy wierdo with a lieing compulsion who likes to use her dandruff as art, I'd make that happen on my own. Thanks but no thanks.

3. The Charlie's Angels AKA The Farah - So lately I've been taking showers at night and letting my hair air dry while I sleep. When I wake up, my hair has taken on the whole feral cat thing I mentioned earlier, which is less of a look and more of a monstrosity. I've got too much to do in the morning, so I can't rewet it, hair-dry it and create The Molly, so I resort to the third option, which is to work with my hair's natural kinda-curly, kinda-wavy, kinda-kinky, kinda-all-over-the-place tendancy. So I curl it. Instead of curling it under, because my hair HATES anything coming close to the Dorthy Hammill look and FIGHTS IT (The cease fire would be O-F-F and the battle would be O-N), I curl it in ringlet's. Not Shirley Templet ringlets mind you. I'm actually trying for Sheryl Crowe ringlets circa her Tuesday Night Music Club days, but I've since given up any and all dreams of ever coming close to that look and now just hope for the best. The resulting do is what can best be described as The Charlies Angels look. It's bouncy and enjoys the occasional head toss side to side as much as I enjoy doing the tossing (That? Sounded horrible. I apologize.), and I occassionaly do the whole lunge-profile thing while making a finger-gun like the Charlie's Angels' logo, just for fun. But by the end of the day, the hair has realized it can't keep the curl up, although it kind of holds onto it the best it can. So it tosses the very ends out all Ehn and the resulting look is a messy Farah Fawcett.

The sucky thing about this look that I'm only realizing now? It's becoming less Farah and more Kelly Wearstler. I know, right? Who in their right mind whould knowingly do THAT to themselves, and yet I've apparantly been doing it. I realize that It's partially my fault. Look I know that if you're going to go ringlets, you have to go all the way with it and curl all your hair. I get that. And I realize it's lazy that I only curl the top layer and so the bottom layer looks frizzy in context. Not a corner I should be cutting. I get that. I especially get that now that I looked in the mirror and saw The Wearstler staring back at me. The Bozo-The-Clown-Bride of Frankenstien Hybrid is doing nobody any favors, especially me. I'm learning from my mistakes.

I couldn't have lost my male readership (as if I had any, heh.) any harder if I'd tried, could I? Even Fighting Nun tuned out paragraphs ago all "Oh Gawd, she's talking about her hair again. I'm Doug and I'm out of here." What's the point you ask? You should know better than to ask that question, becuase the question, much like this diatribe is pointless and fruitless, much like any attempts to work on a treaty with my hair. Just so you know.