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Hair vanity
Jan. 3rd, 2008 10:06 amI'll tell you a secret...I am hopeless at doing my hair.
Extensions are different. That's just a matter of being prepared to sit with your arms up for 4 hours and plaiting. It doesn't have to be neat, as you can just tie all the dreads up afterwards to hide where you've made a mess at the back. Dreads are easy to style, you just tie them in knots until they look right. But actually styling my hair? I'm hopeless at it. I haven't the first clue how to make my hair behave up or down. I've only actually got the hang of blowdrying in the last few months.
I love the idea of long hair, but I've never actually managed to keep it at a decent length for any great amount of time - I just get bored of brushing it and blowdrying it and never knowing how to style it. When it's long, I just wear it in two plaits, or hanging all round my face. My grand-dad's pet name for me is 'horrible little rats-tails schoolgirl' because my hair was habitually a tangled mess around my head, no matter how patiently (or otherwise) Mum brushed it.
This is why I always end up getting frustrated with it and cutting it short. It suits me short, and there's limited things you can do with it, and it's much easier to manage. I am so jealous of girls who can do things to their hair - curl it, quiff it, or even do that thing where you stick it up in random clips at the back and it all looks artfully careless.
Doing anything to my hair involves hours of planning - I need several extra hours to deal with the tears of frustration, washing it out and starting all over again that is the inevitable result of attempting anything pretty with my hair. I'll stare at a picture of Gwen Stefani or Pink and hope that somehow staring hard enough will mean that the knowledge of how to make my hair do that will seep into my brain by osmosis. I'll look up step by step guides on how to do various styles, which will leave me shouting at the computer screen HOW! HOW CAN I DO THAT?! MY ARMS DON'T BEND THAT WAY!!
Even if I do manage to do anything with my hair, it only ever survives about an hour before it starts carefully unravelling itself, or going fluffy. Hairspray just makes it crispy, and makes me feel like I have a hay-style rather than a hair-style.
My hair is now at That Awkward Length; where I have to constantly remind myself that IT WILL GROW and not to succumb to the desire to just chop it all off again.
However, after hours of planning, and a certain amount of luck, I actually manage to Do Something to my hair on new years eve. It wasn't what I was intending to do - although having said that I'm not quite sure what I was actually intending to do really, other than something grown up which worked with the mask and looked sort of pretty that wouldn't unravel when I blinked.
I was SO pleased with it, I appear to have managed to have my back in nearly every photo, rather than my face. This is a Good Thing, as it means I now have evidence of the time I managed to make my hair do something.
Witness:
I feel full of confidence now. I shall add 'GHDs' to my wish list. 'wish' being the operative word, as I see from a quick google that they are in the £100 region. I shall be content to dream of shiny blonde tresses in the mean time, and remember that one time I made my hair Do Something.
Extensions are different. That's just a matter of being prepared to sit with your arms up for 4 hours and plaiting. It doesn't have to be neat, as you can just tie all the dreads up afterwards to hide where you've made a mess at the back. Dreads are easy to style, you just tie them in knots until they look right. But actually styling my hair? I'm hopeless at it. I haven't the first clue how to make my hair behave up or down. I've only actually got the hang of blowdrying in the last few months.
I love the idea of long hair, but I've never actually managed to keep it at a decent length for any great amount of time - I just get bored of brushing it and blowdrying it and never knowing how to style it. When it's long, I just wear it in two plaits, or hanging all round my face. My grand-dad's pet name for me is 'horrible little rats-tails schoolgirl' because my hair was habitually a tangled mess around my head, no matter how patiently (or otherwise) Mum brushed it.
This is why I always end up getting frustrated with it and cutting it short. It suits me short, and there's limited things you can do with it, and it's much easier to manage. I am so jealous of girls who can do things to their hair - curl it, quiff it, or even do that thing where you stick it up in random clips at the back and it all looks artfully careless.
Doing anything to my hair involves hours of planning - I need several extra hours to deal with the tears of frustration, washing it out and starting all over again that is the inevitable result of attempting anything pretty with my hair. I'll stare at a picture of Gwen Stefani or Pink and hope that somehow staring hard enough will mean that the knowledge of how to make my hair do that will seep into my brain by osmosis. I'll look up step by step guides on how to do various styles, which will leave me shouting at the computer screen HOW! HOW CAN I DO THAT?! MY ARMS DON'T BEND THAT WAY!!
Even if I do manage to do anything with my hair, it only ever survives about an hour before it starts carefully unravelling itself, or going fluffy. Hairspray just makes it crispy, and makes me feel like I have a hay-style rather than a hair-style.
My hair is now at That Awkward Length; where I have to constantly remind myself that IT WILL GROW and not to succumb to the desire to just chop it all off again.
However, after hours of planning, and a certain amount of luck, I actually manage to Do Something to my hair on new years eve. It wasn't what I was intending to do - although having said that I'm not quite sure what I was actually intending to do really, other than something grown up which worked with the mask and looked sort of pretty that wouldn't unravel when I blinked.
I was SO pleased with it, I appear to have managed to have my back in nearly every photo, rather than my face. This is a Good Thing, as it means I now have evidence of the time I managed to make my hair do something.
Witness:
I feel full of confidence now. I shall add 'GHDs' to my wish list. 'wish' being the operative word, as I see from a quick google that they are in the £100 region. I shall be content to dream of shiny blonde tresses in the mean time, and remember that one time I made my hair Do Something.
