Hair Today Gone Tomorrow

This morning I cut my hair myself, something I’ve been messing about doing half my life it seems.  And I’ve spent the other half being upset with, happy with, or puzzled by the results of professional haircuts.  At least when I do it myself I save time, learn something, and am always delighted to use the money and time I would have spent with a hairdresser on something more fun.  And less traumatizing.

When we first moved to the Arctic with our one year old daughter my hair was long and straight.  I wore it pulled back at the neck, braided, up in a pony tail and even in pig tails sometimes.   We lived in an isolated community with few amenities, accessible only by air, and I was pregnant and bored.  There’s a deadly combination.  After weeks of conversing with a toddler because my husband was always working or away, using up all my yarn and craft supplies and watching it snow,  I decided to hack off my hair.  Hey, it passed some time.  I took off only a few inches that first time, but then my mother in law sent me the first curling iron I ever owned and the real experimenting began.

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This is me with my two babies (February 1976) after six months in Cambridge Bay and who knows how many self-inflicted hair cuts.  Once my son arrived I had much less time to be bored so the frequency of hair cuts slowed down considerably.

Fast forward to Christmas that same year when we flew to Ontario.  Our son was almost eleven months old and our daughter was two and a half.  I was long overdue for a visit to a salon.  Mothers of young children generally aren’t known for their astute sense of fashion and style, which might explain why I decided to get my hair cut in a “shag”‘ made popular by people like Jane Fonda in the movie Klute.

When I returned with my newly shorn “do” my daughter stopped in her tracks and stared at me.  Not much ever made that kid slow down, so that’s why I remember it.  I picked her up and she grabbed a little fist full of what was left of the hair at my forehead and said “MOMMY ARE YOU IN THERE?”  Yes, my daughter always spoke in caps lock.

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And yes, those are bangs. The shortest bangs in history, except maybe for the ones little kids cut by accident on themselves.  I thought you also might enjoy seeing W in a pink paper party hat, and a messy gift opening Christmas Eve.  And my classy shoes?  Don’t miss those.

The great thing about hair is it keeps on growing and after a couple of months I finally made peace with this hair cut.

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Jane Fonda, eat your heart out.

33 thoughts on “Hair Today Gone Tomorrow”

  2. I’ve ‘trimmed’ my own hair for years, especially when it was pixie cut short and needed constant attention so as not to make me resemble someone who had inserted their finger into a light socket… Now days, I find I am just too cheap to pay someone who will only want to cut it in such a way that it will mean having to spend way too much time messing and styling with it to get it to look like what the cut is supposed to look like. If I didn’t have such a lumpy, bumpy skull I would seriously consider just shaving it all off. But then I suspect I would have to field question after question about my health.

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    • I haven’t been to a hairdresser since I retired. Doing my own trims just doesn’t seem so risky anymore since no one expects me to look professional now. I think we get to a point where we know our own hair too, while it takes a stylist several tries to get it right. Well that’s my theory. lol. Plus I’m cheap. 😊

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    • Funny when I stopped messing around so much blow drying my hair to death I realized I have a lot of natural curl and wave. Do they even do perms anymore? Those things are wicked.

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  9. This is amazing! I would never cut my own hair for fear of ripping it and making split ends but when I was a wee little thing I would do it all the time, much to my mother’s fury! I really enjoyed reading this, and cannot believe you lived in the Arctic! That must have been interesting (albeit boring, since you had nothing to do except watch the snow fall.). Lovely pictures, too, so homey and warm and comfy 🙂

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    • My mother used to let me trim her hair and even give her perms! I think I missed my calling. lol. Anyway it wasn’t too much of a leap to start experimenting on myself. The back is always hard to get right. I am a contortionist with mirrors.
      We were in the north for almost a decade. Good experience. Never want to repeat it. 😄😄

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      • Well, that was lovely of your mother! My gran used to let me do that, I am still thinking of getting into hair, I just love to style hair. You really must be a contortionist with mirrors by now if you have been cutting your own hair all these years! 🙂

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  10. I had that Fonda haircut! My hair cutter called it that: “the Fonda”and I repeated it back as “the fon-duh” –a week later It finally sunk in –oh, the Fonda as in Jane Fonda– You look very cool in that second to the last photo. I say you captured the look perfectly.

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  11. Jan Fonda. I always loved her even though she couldn’t stay out of trouble. Maybe that haircut was the result? I recall my Mom tried to dye her hair when she developed lots of grey.. The reult was a Lucille Ball look alike. All of us kids laughed ourselves silly. Poor Mom, she didn’t realize moms are for laughing at, especially if they are married to the King of Misrule.

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  13. Good for you! I can’t even dye mine myself w/o making a huge mess of it. A friend’s sister cut my hair when I was about 11; I decided I wanted bangs– not a good idea with naturally curly hair. I guess that experience has kept me from any diy.

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  14. I spent my childhood getting loving-hands-at-home haircuts. My mother let me get my first salon haircut (where “salon” = “Supercuts”) right before I entered high school — precipitated by a particularly awful ‘do, henceforth referred to as the “poodle on acid” hairstyle, and the kind of protracted despair and wailing that only a 13yo is capable of. Which is just to say: even during the years that my haircut evoked the Flowbee look with an almost aggressive deliberateness — I MADE A STYLIST DO IT FOR ME.

    More than one woman hairstylist refused to cut my hair during those years, adamant that she would not be responsible for such an atrocity, and recommended a seek out a men’s barber instead. O.o

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    • Close, same province, but it’s way north of here. Our city helping lots of evacuees. No worries, I’m fine. Just bogged down with painting trim and walls at the moment. Thanks for thinking of me Dianne, I will get back to my blog and reading yours one of these days.😊

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