Why I Really Cut My Hair

 I started with hair so long that I literally sat on it whenever I needed to sit.  Adjusting in my seat often involved first picking up all of my hair and holding it so I could change positions.  Sleeping, already a naturally difficult task thanks to an ongoing battle with insomnia was impossible: I'd have to pick up my whole body to move my hair just to roll over.

So in 2006, I cut it all off, to the shoulders at least.  Since 2006 I've got red (a lifelong favorite), added bangs, chopped it all off to a bob, bleached it, grew it out, added henna, threw in some layers, and colored it black.  The long, layered look with the black color actually proved to be my favorite, even though I was the most hesitant about that transition.

In the first week of 2011, I got the wild hair to cut it all off.  Not a bob.  Something almost pixie-ish (I could never truly pull off a pixie, I'm just not that perky!).  I even let my boyfriend do it (can you believe I had to encourage him to just chop it?).  I really liked the results, but my hair grows like a week and within a month or two it became annoying.

1. I cut it because I was tired of maintaining the color.
Sure, I love the color and the cut, but it required a lot of time and money to maintain.  Yes, I could have done the coloring at home, but since I was having it done at a beauty college it was already as affordable as I was going to get.  There are other ways I would rather spend half a Saturday (did I mention it was a college?) than sitting in an uncomfortable chair, not permitted to move.

2. I have good natural highlights and coloring.
My hair actually has some really cool color in it already.  Most of the time it's kind of a mousy-coppery color, but there's a lot of blonde (especially around my face) and in the summer lots of red comes out of the copper. I'm getting to be a bit older, and I wouldn't be surprised if I start getting smatterings of gray soon.  I want to enjoy my natural color for a bit.

3. I'm kind of excited about seeing gray.
I know it's ridiculous, but I always thought I would look AWESOME with gray hair.  I don't know, I guess I've always been partial to silver and I'm not remotely afraid of growing old, as long as I do it well.

4. I didn't want to wash it anymore.
Seriously.  I have always hated shampoo and conditioner.  I've never found a brand or combination that I've liked, save one shampoo and conditioner, and it's so expensive ($30 to $60 per month, depending on hair length) that I'd rather put that money towards something else.  So I tried to go back to washing my hair with baking soda and apple cider vinegar. I stopped the "poo-less" experiment in late 2008 because after an application of apple cider vinegar, my hair was left sticky and straw-like.  I ended up switching to a Trader Joe's brand tea tree oil formula and gave up baking soda.  What I learned recently is that apple cider vinegar stimulates oil production when applied to the scalp and it should be applied as a conditioner to the ends only.  Well, since my hair is so short, I've been using baking soda only (one to two tablespoons, depending on the perceived need) for five months now.  FIVE MONTHS!  I didn't have any yucky problems with transitioning either like I did when I started this before.  It was just like washing my hair with shampoo and conditioner, sans dandruff and limp, frizzy hair.  The only drawback is sometimes I either use too much baking soda or let it sit on my scalp too long (about two minutes is sufficient) and later it sometimes feels like I have a mild chemical burn on my scalp (and that's probably a more severe description than the reality, it's not overly bothersome at all).

Now my hair is past bob-length and I can actually tie it back in cute little pig tails.  You can actually see my natural color dominating most of my hair (there's still a little black at the tips, but it's faded nicely into my natural coloring).  Hopefully I'll stick to this for a bit, but I'm impulsive.

May 2006

January 2011