Trust me. A woman’s greatest concern about her appearance is her hair. With beautiful, healthy hair, short or long, a woman has confidence with the knowledge something about her is right.
A baby girl born with natural curls makes everyone happy except the baby when she gets in elementary or junior high. Maybe the curls are unmanageable, will go only in one direction. A little older, this curly-top learns she can buy items to straighten her hair. Maybe someone else will actually iron her hair on an ironing board for her. Then there are curling irons especially for straightening hair.
When I first witnessed two of my granddaughters actually straightening beautiful wavy hair for the first time each, I wanted to cry or hurt something. Here I was, paying big bucks for beauty shop perms that never lasted over five months. I had to wear much hair spray, even slept with devices on my head to make sure some stray, playful wad of my coiffure didn’t train the wrong way.
Of course, there are stylists, which I’m still searching while I have hair, who know how to cut the locks in the way they grow or look best. These experts are difficult to find or know we would not like the outcome and do the best they can with what is in front of them on someone’s head – unmanageable hair.
In the late seventies, I decided which way my hair grew and still does. From the crown on top of my head, my hair comes forward. Therefore, the bowl-shaped cut is for me, but this isn’t one bit flattering for my face, just my hair.
When I was born a long, long time ago, all mothers wanted girls with a curl. I had little hair, no curls at all. Then one would form itself on the top of my head. Mother had my picture taken several times to prove this.
My mother said she cried many times because I had thin, straight hair with little opportunity for making me cute. In one picture I have, my hair is rolled in three big curls with three bobby pins, and I am 3.
Then came home permanents. I had one in the fall and another in the spring. These concoctions burned and dried out my hair. More frizz than curl.
As I became a high school graduate and even older, shorter styles were popular. One came from a beauty shop plus the permanent, and some days I didn’t mind going out in public. I learned a few roller tricks, too. I never opted for anything extreme.
Look in annuals or yearbooks from the past. If it is you with some trend or out-of-this world style, what will you say to your children’s questions? Why did I ever think I could wear my hair, especially short, parted in the middle?
Some older women I knew, born in the early 1900s and a little later, were really hair-savvy. They wore medium-to-short wavy hair, soft enough to see in black and white pictures. They were always well groomed. Their crowning glory will never really become laughable or obnoxious.
Of course, as a young mother and a teacher, I was part of that “standing” appointment once a week for a haircut and style, lots of teasing for hair volume, and an entire can of hairspray on that result to keep it that way. Nothing was done to the hair until the next week. If the head itched, a rat-tail comb was poked straight end first to scratch the spot. Not everyone’s hair stayed perfectly pruned, but oiliness wasn’t much of a problem, and we could always run by the shop for a touchup if something important was occurring.
Sometime we rolled our hair on empty bathroom tissue cardboard in later years, or on brush rollers, even sponge ones. One of my husband’s brothers pulled a stunt on his wife and almost didn’t survive it. While he was working in a new town, the Welcome Wagon had invited his young wife to a beauty shop for a free do. When she came home to surprise her husband, she could hear the shower running and went in that direction. As she approached the shower, her husband stepped out of nowhere and pushed her head first into that shower as the style of her locks went down the drain.
Only in my years of senility have I decided what I should have done decades ago. Go with the hair the Good Lord gave me. If my hair has no curl of its own, I will wear it straight. I have wash and wear strands, and I feel free with extra time to admire other women’s hair. It’s said American women wash hair too often, taking out the hair’s natural goodness. I try to skip a night. But at least my hair is my own, not held in place by sticky material. I can get up and go thirty minutes earlier, and I don’t cry as often whining, “What can I do to make my hair look right.”
Perhaps other areas of my life need a similar treatment in various ways. Go with what I came with. Can’t hurt. Might help.
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