Friday, April 17, 2009

adventures in grooming -- haircuts


Today was a beautiful spring day (finally!) It got me thinking about taking the top off jeepy-jeep, which of course got me to thinking about corralling my hair so that I don't end up with one giant dread lock when I arrive at my destination. The corralling of the hair is extremely important in Jeepgirl world, even if hair care, per se, is not.

The last time I got my hair cut was, um, can it have been since last March? How can that be? That's over a year! That can't be right. I must have gotten another cut since then, right? Regardless, my hair looks surprisingly good for zero upkeep in an entire year. See?

Today, I'm sporting the super straight, post New England winter hair. It sort of looks like I just spent 2 hours and an ironing board preparing myself to go see Jim Morrison in New Haven. But really, I just took a shower before bed and ran a brush through it when I woke up.

In the summer, when it get humid, things take a whole different turn. Remember the Friends episode when they went to the Caribbean and what happened to Monica? That's me. In August, I go from looking like hippie chick to looking like Slash.

I have absolutely no control over my hair. In the jeep, I can french braid, elasticize and bandanna the whole mess into submission. But as far as the texture, how it falls, whether it flies around my head in a frizzy halo or lies flat, I have no control.

I think that's why I generally keep it long. Because ponytails are my friends. As are braids, barrettes, and headbands. If you have hair elastics and headbands, you don't need product. (I've tried product in the past and it ended disastrously every time. More on that later.) With short hair, you need product.

Once, I got this super cute Meg Ryan-ish bed-head haircut. Know what? It takes an awfully long time and an awful lot of product to get that just-rolled-out-of-bed look. The only reason I got that cut was because I thought I could actually just roll out of bed. Not!

Another time, I got a longer in the front, shorter in the back, swingy, Vidal-Sasson cut. It looked great with very little effort. For about 6 weeks. Then, as it grew out between my yearly trips to the hairdresser, it just looked plain weird. And since I'm just too lazy to go to the hairdresser, weird was what I was stuck with.

Now my big dilemma is: as I approach 40, isn't this long, one length hairstyle a bit young for me?But given my lazy nature, is there any solution? AND...can this solution survive a ride in the jeep?

1 comment:

Diane said...

My hair care regime is much like yours (except that I have to do the color thing, given how much grey I have now, so I get it cut when I get it colored). I'm 44 and my hair is a tad shorter than yours (just a hair past my shoulders... no pun intended). It grows incredibly fast and it's been 6 weeks since I had it cut, so it's longer than I normally like it (but not much). I think it's OK like this for another couple of years. My 2 cents :)