Chronicles of Hairnia

[TurquoiseSunset]

Oh no, I hope you're not serious! You'll get lung cancer from using all that hairspray!

[kasie]

Friends and fellow-sufferers - if I may call you that - that Big Hair look is caused by aiming the hot air from the dryer underneath the hair. It's called 'root lift' - if you lift the hair on a brush and aim underneath, it lifts the hair away from the scalp: if you roll the hair on a brush and aim the heat on the top of the hair, the hair lies closer to the head. How do I know? Well, it's surprising what you learn watching make-overs on day-time tv...... No, no, I've given all that up nowadays, honest, Guv, but they filled the time when I was convalescent a few years ago.

Would you believe I didn't know until I was twenty-five that I had naturally curly hair? I was apparently a little toe-rag about having my hair washed/brushed/combed/touched even, so my mother took me, all of two and a half years old, dumped me in the hairdresser's chair and muttered through clenched teeth, 'Cut it all off, she's driving me mad!' And insisted thereafter that I kept it cut short - and as she and my father were keeping me in my studies, I felt I ought to keep to their requirements....until the day I sat behind instead of beside my friend, Pauline, and felt a surge of envy at the sight of her smooth golden tresses and conceived the desire to have hair just like hers. The fact that her honey blond silken locks cost her dearly, not just in time but in hard cash too escaped me, as did the fact that I had blue-black hair that behaved like wire and it was never, ever, going to flow and gleam like hers. Nevertheless, I set to and let my hair grow - the most difficult part was ignoring my mother's pointed comments about 'looking like a poet/ a besom in a fit/as if I'd come through a hedge backwards' etc, etc. But as time went on, my hair, which normally grew at a rate of knots when I tried keeping it short, seemed not to grow at all when I wanted it long. One day in exasperation I pulled at the ends to see just how near my shoulders it had grown - and discovered it was nearly touching my shoulders, but when I let it go, it sprang back in tight, though unruly, curls. My hairdresser prescribed a perm to straighten it but warned me it would ruin my hair which would never be the same again. I persevered for a few months more, had a special hair-do for graduation which involved hours having it dried on big rollers then redried by hand and I loved it, though my mother declared the centre parting made me look 'like Jane Eyre' (very literary hair I have....). The mortar board sat neatly and safely on top next morning - until it rained... No amount of pins would keep the wretched thing securely on the mop of tight curls that resulted from the damp air! I sidled off to the hair dresser and had it 'shaped' before I started my new job. And my mother loved me again. But I've never had my head as severely shorn since - a little natural curl, aided by 'root lift' has been my style ever since. I know it needs cutting when it takes more than a couple of passes with the dryer to set it in place.

[Scheherazade]

Friends and fellow-sufferers - if I may call you that - that Big Hair look is caused by aiming the hot air from the dryer underneath the hair. It's called 'root lift' -

That is what I used to do!!!

Kasie> I loved reading the story of your hair; you should post it in your blog as well so that it does not get lost in here.

[kasie]

Glad it raised a smile, Scher - it was a disaster (to me) at the time! My mother never said, 'I told you so' - she didn't need to, it was written all over her face.

Ummm - I don't have a blog....

[Scheherazade]

Ummm - I don't have a blog....

We can change that right now:

http://www.online-literature.com/for...php?do=newblog

[higley]

I can't settle on a color.... I was dark brown for a while, then a medium red, then a purplish red... and now blonde-ish. I already know I'll be going back to a wild red once I tire of the blonde! I have a visual timeline of these through photos, they're like stages of my life..

[Buh4Bee]

I have to laugh, because I love big hair. I just don't have the patience to do it. I have all the equipment and shocked my younger sister when I tried to indoctrinate her into the backyard hair secrets that we all swear were done at the salon by the dam hair dresser. I also didn't learn to "do" my hair until I was in my late twenties.

Well, I guess here I can claim my hairitage roots, because I grew up in Jersey in the 80s in the midst of the BIG hair phenomenon. Thank God, I moved away. However, I still get a body wave once a year to be sure I am maintaining some kind of volume in my pin straight hair.

[TurquoiseSunset]

I can't settle on a color.... I was dark brown for a while, then a medium red, then a purplish red... and now blonde-ish. I already know I'll be going back to a wild red once I tire of the blonde! I have a visual timeline of these through photos, they're like stages of my life..

I once saw a picture you posted of yourself and I think you'll nice with any red...

I also didn't learn to "do" my hair until I was in my late twenties.

I only got the hang of my hair in my early twenties. So all through highschool I hated my hair because I could never get it to do what I wanted.

[Niamh]

I only got the hang of my hair in my early twenties. So all through highschool I hated my hair because I could never get it to do what I wanted.

Same here.

[Scheherazade]

So, yesterday I did go to the hairdresser's and had a haircut. Now I have a wavy bob (they cut off about 5 inches), leaving me looking somewhat like this:



I am liking it so far!

[papayahed]

Very cute.

[Scheherazade]

I am enjoying it so far!

[*Classic*Charm*]

Pretty Scher! So where are the actual photos? Unless you really are Halle Berry in disguise

[DanielBenoit]

Wow Schez, I never imagined you looked like this!

[Scheherazade]

Well, if you ignore her blond hair, blue eyes, striking cheekbones, perfect nose and, most importantly, "come hither" looks, we look pretty much the same!