Short and sassy

I got a haircut yesterday. My chin length bob is gone, and in its place is a spiky pixie cut. If I didn't wear makeup, I'd look like a guy. But, hey, I'm from Texas, and while I may not have the Big Hair anymore, my momma taught me the benefits of red lipstick and black mascara.

The haircut reminded me of my first haircut, which was also very, very short. Cut that way by my older brother with the garden shears when I was eighteen months old and he was five. Actually he only wacked off one side before my grandmother looked out the kitchen window and came screaming out into the yard to stop him. Later, my grandmother with tears in her eyes met my mother at the backdoor when she came home. "I'm so sorry. I couldn't stop him before... before..."

My mother pushed her way inside. "What? What are you telling me? Where are the children? Are my babies all right?"

And there I sat in a highchair eating a cracker with one side of my head covered with delicate, darling blonde curls while the other side looked like an Indian had gotten hold of me, cutting my hair close to the scalp.

Mother was so relieved that no one had been hurt, or worse. She finished the job that my brother had begun and cut off the remaining baby curls, except for one right on top. Yes, I became the little girl with the curl, as described by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

There was a little girl,

            Who had a little curl,

Right in the middle of her forehead.

            When she was good,

            She was very good indeed,

But when she was bad...(well, no need to go there!)

 

The finished haircut was quite adorable. Just as the one I got yesterday is.

 

Actually, short hair on a woman is bold and sassy, and the older I get, the bolder and sassier I feel.

 

Might as well look the part, right?

Red

My adventures as a redhead, no matter what hue, illustrate the personas I tried as I grew into womanhood. The color, the length, and the style reflected my mood, my outlook, my perception of my place in the world.

I became a redhead the summer between junior high and high school, thanks to Miss Clairol. Born Irish-American I had the peaches and cream complexion of a redhead, even had a splatter of freckles scattered across my nose, but my mother's genes from her luscious dark brunette hair mixed with those Irish genes of my dad's and the combination resulted in a mousy bland brown on my head.

That all changed in 1960. In less than an hour I became a reddish blonde.

I stayed that way for the summer, but I quickly selected more exotics reds as I moved through high school and college: Coppertone, Sparkling Sherry, Red Ginger. Oh, how I loved those rich, vibrant colors. If I were meeting  you for the first time, I didn't have to describe what I'd be wearing. Instead I'd say, "I'm a redhead." And sure enough, you could pick me from the crowd. Being a redhead was bold.

When I graduated from college and started working as a journalist, I changed from Clairol to L'Oreal. It cost about a dime more, but as the commercial said, I was worth it. It was the sixties and I was feeling the feminist stirrings of self worth. Of course, in Texas, that meant Big Hair--and the attitude to go with it. Bold became bodacious.

The length and style changed over the years as well. I wore it shoulder length. I wore it in a French twist. I wore it in a ponytail. I cut it short and spiked it with hair product. I grew it into a classic bob. I adorned my hair with turquoise burettes, silver clips, velvet headbands, fresh flowers, and braided leather. My hair was silky and thick, with a natural curl that I hated in my teens and twenties but embraced from my thirties and beyond.

For fifty years, until my hair turned so gray that the auburn dye faded too quickly, I lived life as a dramatic redhead.

Truth is, I felt unsure and insecure at many stages in my life, always thinking I needed five points added to my IQ and ten pounds deducted from my weight. So I hid behind fiery bravado. In essence, color from a bottle transformed me from blah brown to radiant red; it was an affordable and immediate transformation. I might be quaking inside but my exterior shouted brassy and sassy. It was the narrative I was writing for myself and eventually I became the character of my own invention. With each new chapter in my life, when it came time to reinvent myself, the color red was always a part of the ritual.


What is the story of your hair? How has your crowning glory changed through the years?