So, back in March (ALREADY! Holy shit, but time hurtles ever onward; but that's another post.....) I'd written about the Saga of my Hair and how I was ready for a change and how that change involved a throwback hairstyle from my childhood and from Jane Fonda's Hanoi Jane/"Klute" period (namely, The Shag) and how my former hairdresser simply wasn't getting it around the look I wanted and so I quietly fired the dude and found a new hairstylist--a woman--who gave me exactly the shaggy 'do I'd been questing for. And it got long.
Long for me is to my shoulders and down--way down--past my ears.
But then we moved swiftly from Spring into Humid Summer, and the 'do would not behave.
I have cowlicks up the kazoo--on my crown, at my forehead, at the nape of my neck. And I have a bit of wave, especially around said cowlicks.
So, no, contrary to popular belief, my hair is actually NOT dead straight (it used to be more-or-less dead straight when I was wee. I am no longer wee, and let let me tell you, your hair texture does change as you get older).
I am also not the sort to flat-iron and do a lot of conking/manipulating in order to achieve a Look. I work for a big corporation that hires a lot of 20-something chickie-babes who tend to pretty much be knock-offs of one another. Lots of them are blond (this being the Midwest) and lots of them have long, flat-ironed swingy hair.
In my opinion, they are all interchangeable.
Hair, to me, needs to be sexy, but also fun, kicky, simple, relaxed and terribly easy to style, for men as well as women (it is advisable that you NOT resemble an uptight, self-loathing brain-dead refugee from the Republican National Committee). Personally, I like finger-styling my hair. I am not opposed to running some goop through my locks to add volume, hold and shine--in fact, these are attributes I rather appreciate in a head of hair--but beyond that, I need simplicity.
Especially when it's humid beyond belief and when, after much early-morning pre-work wrangling my hairstyle lasts all of 2.5 seconds and ends up wildly fluffy and weirdly wavy and completely unmanageable after a quick swim to the bus stop.
Which it has since, oh, May.
And so, observing all the chicly-shorn, cropped pixie cuts adorning the program-working heads of many of my fellow 12-steppers, I decided to return to a shorter 'do. A little different then my usual pixie, with more verve, choppiness, texturizing and kicky personality.
As she cut it, I felt the Real Caitlin emerging again.
And, yes, this latest hairstyle has indeed been subjected to bouts of horrid, cat-flattening humidity (my cat Abby becomes about 5 feet long and flat as a bear rug when it's hot out) and has held up a heckuva lot better. No whirls and whorls, no unholy, unruly flips and flops, no throwing up my hands in the women's restroom and shoving the fluffiness behind my ears.
Oh, and I have bangs again. Cute, fun, textured eye-enhancing bangs.
I have learned that living in the nation's midsection means necessarily submitting to the wild extremes of the weather, in many ways, and my hair is no match for this region's humidity. And just like my impending return to the west coast, getting my hair cut shorter is a return to what I know, to what works, to what is familiar and comfortable and ultimately very me.
So now I'm more of a Cute Mama.
And that suits me just fine.
