acceptance…

Thousands of hours…thousands of dollars…

Yep, for fifty years I’d love to know how many hours were spent drying my hair straight and how much money went towards products to tame the wild.

Let’s start at the beginning.  I’ve tried to remember when I first realized my hair wasn’t “normal.”  Looking back at baby photos and childhood school pictures it seemed manageable.  At least I don’t remember screaming and crying that my hair wouldn’t behave. (Now perhaps my mom has a different story, Mom?)  And yes, some photos appeared to have a touch of being out of control, but in general I looked pretty “normal.”  But high school was a totally different story.

During those high school years, I was faced with out of control, curly, bushy hair.  I can remember sleeping on huge curlers, large enough to remind me of those Minute Maid Premium frozen lemonade cans.   I had to go to bed with them as it’d take at least eight hours for my hair to dry. Should I even write about getting up even earlier so I could go by my girlfriend’s house to have her iron my hair? Yes, iron my hair with an iron…on an ironing board.  Ahhh, but then came the hard bonnet dryer.  Can’t remember how many of those I had in my lifetime.  That would take at least 45 minutes to an hour to dry my hair, but much better than eight.  And…I didn’t have to sleep in them!  And yes, if I went anywhere, guess what had to come along?  Yep, even when I went with my boyfriend and his parents to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina when I was seventeen, my trusty bonnet was my best friend and it tagged along.  Oh and the beach….unless you have curly hair you have no idea how horrific it is to take vacations near and on water.  Oh, and the taming (not tanning) products.  I can’t even go there…to much post traumatic stress.

As I worked my way up the corporate ladder and worked tons of hours like good corporate lackeys do… the juice cans had to go. Not even enough hours in the day, and certainly not enough to spend time on hair.  So somewhere along the way, I had it cut.  Cut short.  I mean real short.  Viola…I went from one hour to ten minutes in nothing flat. It also helped that by then, blowdryers went from 600 to 1,000 watts.  Major progress!  BTW, after my first trip to Europe, I was tired of blowing circuits in the hotel rooms with my dryer, so from then on a blow dryer was purchased upon arrival.  Yes, I have several from various countries.  Hair stylists ruled the world, because when it’s very short, there’s less curl…but that also means lots of hair cuts.  You get the drill.  Lots of money. I lived in Scottsdale you see.  So let’s just fast forward.

Years later and no corporate, I decided to embrace my natural curly hair.  Yes, it was time to accept and love myself as I am at age 50. So here I am a few (ok five) years later, my hair as long as it was when I was a teenager and I’m finally accepting my curls.  There are good hair days and there are not so good hair days.  But I have to say, I’ve never felt more liberated than I do today with the status of my hair.  The ocean, the rain, the humidity…I say…bring it on!

Now if I could just learn to accept my natural color…  Hmm, NO.  Been there, done that and not ready to go back there, but that’s another story.  So now I get my hair colored in Soho, NYC.  Ching-a-ling.

Cross-posted over at Vision and Verb –

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