The Many Faces (and Hairstyles) of...

...me! I know it has been awhile, but I am finally getting around to finding and posting pictures of me and my different hairstyles at various points in my life. You can see I have changed a great deal. Thanks for Peggy for most of the pictures. I took them off my "Happy 50th" poster that she made for my surprise party nine years ago...

As you can see, I've always been blonde, in some shade or another. Even now, not too much gray hair shows up in my darker blonde hair. As a child, my hair was platinum blonde, very fine, very thick, and very straight, although you can't tell it by all the pictures of me. Invariably, the pictures showed me with a fluffy hairdo. This was due to the diligent efforts of my mother, who washed my hair each Saturday night and then sat me on the floor between her knees and proceeded to torture me by twisting my hair into tight pin curls that were secured by bobby pins, many of which had lost the protective rubber tip. This started when I was very small--the first picture you see was taken when I was four, and in the second shot I was about six or seven. Every Sunday my hair was a combination of fluff and frizz, and it got progressively less curly throughout the week. I remember growing hair long enough for a ponytail when I was about eight, but I think my mom thought this was too much trouble to maintain because I went back to short hair after that. About that time, Mom tried home permanents, which left me feeling like a ball of frizz, and I hated them. They were stinky and ugly. I think I continued to get them until I was in junior high, when I took over my own styling. At that time, I swore I would never get another perm--more on that later.

When I started fixing my own hair, I did the brush roller thing. Since my hair was so fine and I didn't want perms, I had to roll my hair every night and sleep on the curlers. Picture number three shows how I looked throughout much of high school, although with different hair lengths. I would get a short haircut at the beginning of each summer and let my hair grow until the next summer, with longer hair in the winter. My hair was odd and hard to style, and keeping it pretty was complicated by the fact that I wouldn't tease my hair or use hairspray because I hated the way it made my hair feel. And I wanted that soft and smooth hair because I was a hair twirler. I had a specific hank of hair that I fooled with much of the time, and it felt good between my fingers. When I was in high school, the look was a flip hairstyle, which you see in picture number four. Usually I couldn't achieve this look, and one side flipped up and the other turned under, but I seem to have managed it in this picture when I was 18.

About that time, hairstyles began to change, and long, straight hair was in. Finally, a low-maintenance look! The next two pictures show that style. The close-up was my senior college picture and the one used in my engagement announcement that ran in the paper.

I kept my long hair throughout college and the first several years of marriage, but in my mid-twenties, I was ready for a change, and I got it. I got a shag haircut with many different lengths, and it lasted several years. From that point on, I kept my short hair as it was easier to care for and keep neat, and with three kids, that was a necessity.

During my 30's, I thought I needed to do something to jazz up my flat hair, so I started getting perms (done by a professional), even though I was leery of the frizzy look I had had as a child. The perms weren't frizzy, but I still felt like a poodle when a perm was new. It began to look good about 2-3 months after I got it. I never did figure out a way to get a perm that didn't leave me too curly in the beginning, so I abandoned the perms a few years ago. I now get my hair cut about every 5-6 weeks and use a curling iron when I wash it. I still don't put much effort into styling it, but my hairdresser has been cutting my hair for over 20 years, and she has got it down to a science. It's very easy to maintain a neat look. I am proud to say that I have never colored my hair, although I do confess to occasionally using a spray that is 50% peroxide and 50% water to keep it from getting too mousy in color.

I have always considered my hair one of my better features because it is naturally blond and very soft and silky to the touch. It's not fancy, but it is my style, which is unadorned and down-to-earth. It fits me to a tee, I guess. Now you know more than you ever really wanted about my hair. I'll try to think of something more interesting next time...