I Whip My Hair Back and Forth... and It Hurts My Neck

"The hair is the richest ornament of women." - Martin Luther

Ain't that the truth?! It's almost crazy when you think about it! No matter what designer outfit you put on, how many carats are in your ears and around your throat, or who airbrushed your makeup this morning, if your hair is not groomed, neither are you. Some women are lucky and have the luxury of hair that they can just run their fingers through and walk out of the house looking gorgeous! 

Not me. Never me. Ever. Like not even one time.

It all started when I was born. Like my son, I was born with a head full of straight blackish-brown hair. Then, it started to curl and kept on curling until I was a regular Shirley Temple. Life was good. Then, disaster: I learned to move. Wind, rain, carbon dioxide particles, random foliage, Azythromycin (yeah, I know it's an antibiotic, but I figure with everything else, this was probably there too), all of it got into my hair and thus began the downward spiral (curl pun intended) of the life of my hair. 

When I was 8 I moved out of my mother's house. It was time, I needed to spread my wings, see the rest of the Inland Empire. Unfortunately, the family I moved in with didn't know how to do my hair, so I was elevated to the position of full-time stylist at the tender age of 8, a feat most couldn't dream of. I say full-time stylist because at the time I had hair half way down my back, and for child that age, it may as well have been 40ft long. There was one style that I mastered quickly: the ponytail. Yes, the classic ponytail, so versatile, yet so simple! Fast forward 5 years and you'd find me in junior high, still rocking that ponytail. Every now and then I might try a half up, half down thing, but the next day, the PT (that's cool talk for ponytail) was back in action. It was my go-to 'do! Sure, I'd developed the bad habit of cutting the hair tie out of my hair when it was too tangled to remove and I got too frustrated to keep working on it, but hey, no biggie. And while it's true that I probably didn't actually get all the tangles out of my bushy, rat's nest of a PT for all of the 8th grade, you can bet your sweet ass that the front of my hair was slicked down with gobs of gel and looked damn good (in my 8th grade opinion, of course). 

By now I'd been living in the desert for a few years. You may not know this, but heat is the bane of the curl's existence. I'd gone from cute, Shirley ringlets to frizz. I can't elaborate on the frizz, because that's all there was. Frizz. I again came upon a turning point in my life: my introduction to the hot comb. And what a glorious change it was! I had straight hair! ME! It was amazing. Sure, as soon as I washed it, the frizz was back with a vengeance, angry for having been masked by the blistering heat of the comb, but now that I knew straight hair was within my grasp, I was a changed woman... or pre-teen, whatever. It was hell to get done since once it was straightened my hair literally touched my ass, thus it took forever, but it was worth it for those few short hours of silky smooth strands. I shit you not, some guy in Carl's, Jr. came up to me and told me he'd almost mistaken me for Mariah Carey. Of course, that just about made my millennium! 

Freshman year

One of my brighter days

Let's skip the odd stage that was my high school hair and go straight (haha, 'nother hair joke) to my college years. I'd dabbled in dying my hair in high school (black... *shudder*... those were dark times), but I found my true color right before college: Red. Yes, after years of being Melissa F., Fransaw, Mixed Melissa, and the ever popular Franswizzle, I'd evolved into Redhead Melissa.  How awesome is that?! But the fame took it's toll... or maybe it was the chemicals in the dyes. I'd first strip (translation = bleach) my hair of the previous color, then immediately apply a fresh coat of reddy goodness. The closer I got to graduation, the brighter it got. I went from an auburn haired freshman to a bright, fire-engine, crayola red, dead-from-constant-substance-abuse haired junior before I finally took pity on my poor bedraggled locks and dyed them brown.

That brings us to more recent years. I've had my up-dos and downs since I've lived here in San Diego, what with being a few miles from the ocean and the havoc the humidity wreaks on my hair. Now that I have a child, having a beautifully styled mane is one of my lesser concerns, but it's a concern nonetheless. As Martin Luther said, it's my richest ornament, I can't just chop it off all willy-nilly into some "mom-do"! Not that I wouldn't like too, but with the curls, any short 'do immediately becomes an afro. Oh, how I'd love to go to a salon and have my tresses dressed by a professional, to come out looking like a goddess with flowing strands that glint in the afternoon sun, but like it or not, the PT has rapidly risen to the top spot in my arsenal once again (and sometimes that's still pretty time consuming). So now I have mid-back length, brown, curly (but sometimes straight), poorly cut (because I did it myself) hair to serve as my ornament. 

I have my good days: 

And my NOT so good days:

I had thought about wrapping this post up with some feel-good comments about how my hair is just part of who I am, that I embrace it and I love it, blah, blah, sappy, blah! But seeing as how that "NOT so good day" was this morning, I'm thinking it's time I get my shit together and do something with this mop! I do love my hair, but I'll love it even more when I pick my new style for my new era as a mom. I've got it! Short, blond, asymmetrical bob! YES!

.... Alright I'm kidding... about the blond.