Hair's the Thing

Or, locking in your identity

Ever thought about how your hair can really shape how you feel about yourself?

My hair these days, recently washed, air-dried, no product whatsoever

I’ve always had a back-and-forth kind of love/hate dynamic with my hair, and I mean since I was a child. Originally, I had dead-straight stringy blonde hair that always looked like it needed a hair brush. My granny always told me I needed a bow in my hair, and what tiny Kristen heard was “your hair’s not pretty enough without a bow.” Then I hit puberty, and my straight hair curled up like freshly grated parmesan cheese melting on pasta and suddenly I’m getting teased by classmates, getting called Tina Turner. After eighth grade my family moved away from super-humid South Carolina to Texas, and I quickly discovered that with a little bit of frizz-control gel, suddenly my curls were actually pretty. I’ve never been particularly good at styling hair, or really had the interest in learning fancy braids or anything, and as a girl mom I never went nuts with bows bigger than their heads. I always told (and still tell) the girls that their hair looks beautiful just as it is, mainly cos I didn’t ever feel that way about my own. It kinda became a self-fulfilling prophesy, as so many things do.

Hi there, by the way—if you’re new here, you probably don’t really know what I’m talking about, and are possibly wondering where the memes are (more of those on Monday, I promise). Well, brief intro, I’m Kristen, wife of Ian and mother to Miranda (16) and Betsy (3). I share Momlife Memes on Mondays here, and Music Memes on my husband’s Substack, The Producer, and later in the week I stick to my actual original purpose—writing about Betsy, who has Down Syndrome, and how Ian and I are raising her as naturally and non-medically as possible. If you’d like an even more in-depth intro to our family, you can read the following post I wrote last year:

I’m gonna segue briefly here because earlier this week, already knowing what I was planning on writing about, I ran into the following post from a writer I recently subscribed to, and you might want to, too! She liked my memes and subbed to me, so I checked out her stuff and got hooked on her writing immediately—she’s sooo relatable and hilarious! And this is what she posted this week, and I was like, no way. I’m definitely sharing this. So check out Brain Dump Before Bedtime…

Because When Life Feels Too Heavy… You Cut Sh*t Off.

Ok so back to my own hair issues. When I was in my thirties, I started getting adventurous with my hair, and found the perfect stylist to help me achieve some pretty cool things. I met her through a mutual friend, and Ashley and I have been friends for probably thirteen or fourteen years now. Besides doing some pretty cool “normal” coloring and cute cuts, I also started having her do undercuts for me, where she’d shave or buzz part of the lower layers of my hair, and she’d get super artistic there. Which, by the way, that’s like instant air conditioning on your head, it feels amazing in the summer. My hair looked completely conservative and just straight up pretty as long as it was down, but as soon as I put it in a clip or ponytail, the real fun stuff showed! I’ll include a little gallery of some of my favorite styles she’s done:

I swear she has a gift. I’ve gotten away from doing all the crazy stuff with my hair in the past few years, mainly cos it’s an unnecessary expense. But also because I did something to my hair in September 2021 that kinda changed everything.

When I met Ian the previous February, and I mean literally in the first conversation we ever had, he told me that he cut his own hair, buzzing it all off as needed, and I admitted that I had always wanted to buzz all mine off. Just once, to see what it was like. (Probably thanks to that scene in Empire Records where Robin Tunney shaves her head in the record store bathroom.) His immediate response was a wide-eyed grin and the words, “Do it!” I always worried that I might like, have a funny-shaped head or something and just not know it, but I still had it on my mental Bucket List, and this brief interaction lit a fire in me. This guy I had just met encourages me to do something crazy and cool I’d always wanted to do, and it felt good. I didn’t know in that moment that he and I were about to start dating, we’d eventually get married and have a very special baby, and oh yeah, that he would be the one to actually buzz all my hair off for me.

Fast forward to September 5, that was the day it happened. I had him take photos of me in progress, starting with a “before” photo (where I had my eyes closed, but that was not intentional). I also had some purple in my hair at the time.

BEFORE

This is one of those things you’re either all in or all out, and once you start, there’s pretty much no stopping. I was all in. It was wild to see all that hair on the floor, let me tell you. I may have had a brief panic moment of what have I done, but it was fleeting, because I knew there was no point in regretting, and also that I would regret never doing it even more. Ian kept buzzing until all I had left was a Mohawk, and a partially purple one, at that. We paused the haircut for a good five minutes, not just to take a break, but just so that I’d be able to say I’d once had a Mohawk. Personally, I think I kinda rocked it for those five minutes.

From stroke one to Mohawk

After it was all done, I ran back to my house and showered off, then got dressed and prettied up so we could go out for drinks. Ian took an after photo for me when we got to our favorite spot. I think it turned out pretty great, actually! I loved it. My hair (or lack thereof) was so fun and easy to take care of, and since it was September and still pretty warm here in Georgia, it felt amazing. I can remember going into the walk-in fridge at work the next day and being completely shocked by how cold it was!

AFTER

I always figured I’d only ever do this once, but I ended up buzzing it off a few more times before ultimately deciding I wanted my hair back for good. I buzzed it again in April just before Ian and I got married (he had more hair than I did), and then again in July. It was growing back nicely and looked kinda pretty when Betsy was born in October. Here’s the thing, though. I had no idea how it was going to make me feel about myself. I had to take extra steps to feel pretty or even feminine. I normally like to dress kinda chill in jeans and t-shirts or tank tops, but I felt like I had to wear nicer tops to look girly. Which I do have plenty of those, I do actually like to look nice, but just going casual in my usual clothes felt like it wasn’t enough. I even felt like I was not enough. Add onto that the crazy hormonal changes between pregnancy and post-partum, and dealing with the stress of a baby with special needs who had to be hospitalized a few times, and let’s just say my self-esteem absolutely tanked.

A weird thing about growing your hair back is just how it grows back. I mean it starts out all the same length and continues that way, and well, that’s not really how most hairstyles look. It doesn’t look natural, even though it actually is. And my hair was not the same. It’s always been kinda thin (it only looks big), but now it was really thin, and had much more grey sprinkled throughout. It seemed to have lost its luster, and really, so had I. Besides that, I had recently developed an allergy to coconut—part of that realization came because my scalp was just super itchy all the time, and I took a look at all my hair products, and yep, all had some form of coconut oil in them. If you’re like me and prefer natural, non-chemical beauty products, it’s extremely hard to find any without coconut oil. I got to where sometimes I wouldn’t use any product at all, and had to come to peace with how my hair looked when I just let it do its thing. After being teased so much for my frizzy hair as a teenager, that took some doing.

So while my last buzzing was in July 2022, I don’t think I got it cut for real again until about a year ago (although I might be wrong on that). I went back to my girl Ashley and she put some more blonde highlights and some copper low-lights, and I also opted to have her give me an undercut again, just without any fancy designs or colors.

And once again, I kinda felt pretty. But it hasn’t become my regular state of being, I’m not all the way there yet. I still don’t feel like myself. My hair reflects that a lot—I think it always has. I struggle with getting it to look like I want it to, like, ever. Right now I’m ready to get it cut again, and even it out some more. I’m probably going to lose quite a bit of length in doing that, so that’ll take some adjustment as well. I’ve also decided to grow out the undercut (Ian had been keeping it buzzed for me), and that is all kinds of awkward. It’s a weird length right now and if I do a ponytail, it just looks like my whole head is confused. I may regret this decision come summertime when I get hot and the world’s weirdest looking ponytail keeps getting weirder. As fun as it was, I don’t think I’ll go back to doing the wild designs and colors anytime soon, but I am determined to come back to myself. It’s already been a journey, and that journey is far from over, but I’m on my way and not turning back. I’ll update when I’ve gotten my hair done again!

My girls both have amazing hair—Miranda has long, blonde hair she doesn’t want to cut for anything, and it’s thick and strong. She recently took it upon herself to dye the front sections of her hair pink for Valentine’s Day, and she’s maintaining it well. It looks really good! Betsy’s hair is red like her dad’s, but it doesn’t seem quite as red as it did when she was littler. It’s getting longer all the time, with pretty little curls, and I loooove it. I put it in messy, uneven pigtails on a whim today (that’s all I can manage with her wiggling and my lack of hair skills), and it still looks like the cutest thing ever, even after they’ve gotten all loose and started falling down, like they are in this photo.

That’s all I’ve got for this week. What’s your relationship with your hair like? Do you feel like your hair is a big part of your identity? Tell me your fun (or horrific) hair stories in the comments!

I’ll be back Monday with more Momlife Memes! Please consider subscribing if you haven’t already, and maybe even upgrade to paid for a mere $5 a month (or $50 for a year). You can show support for my work in various other ways, if you feel so inclined, and I’ll give you some nifty little buttons below so you can do just that. Thank you so much for reading!