Something befuddling happens to me every five years that I’m hard put to explain. I get a most strange tingling in my hair follicles and am compelled to cut everything off my head. In other words, I go short. And every single solitary time, I hate it, and every time I forget I hate it and do it again five years later. In 2007, it wasn’t so so bad, just kind of shaggy and lopsided. It was 2002 that I regret with all my heart. There was curliness involved, a rat tail, and too much nape exposure.
Which brings me to now, because if you’ve done the math, you’ll deduce that 2012 is the fifth year.
Somebody grab my head and keep it somewhere safe until the year passes without a shortening incident.
As for you, please describe a hair atrocity. What horrible hairstyle did you once wear? (Pictures, please!) What haircut were you compelled to try despite all conventional wisdom? Did you ever dye your hair a color not represented in nature?
Please do tell.
Post your submission in the comments OR post in your blog and leave a link to your blog in the comments.
First time to PROMPTuesday? Read a bit about it here. Want to see what’s been written in the past? Catch up on the PROMPTuesdays archive here.
Galit Breen says
One word: Perms.
*Shudder*
Jennifer says
Hair atrocity? One time about a month before my brother’s wedding I had highlights put into my pixie cut. My “reddish” highlights turned out orange in my dark brown hair. I looked like I had tiger stripes. It was horrible.
Alexandra says
AND not just every 5 years BUT WHY do we wait the DAY before some big huge thing to do a drastic change.
I decided to lift my color several shades from my natural brown black the day before my son’s grade school graduation: I looked like Celia Cruz.
Trish says
http://www.3kidsandabreakdown.com/2012/01/17/hair-today-gone-tomorrow/
Mad Woman behind the Blog says
Big hair and bad sweaters…an ugly combo. Add two brothers with porn ‘staches and you’ve got one awesome family photo.
Enjoy: http://i1230.photobucket.com/albums/ee483/MadWomanbehindtheBlog/scan0001.jpg
Lori Dyan says
Since it’s 2012 and the world is supposedly nearing its end, you could chop your hair safe in the knowledge that we’ll all be gone soon anyway…I know, silver lining, right? #youarewelcome
Motherhood on the Rocks says
In junior high I not only got a perm, but got a short chop to the chin. Can anyone say poodle effect? I wish I was kidding.
Green Girl in Wisconsin says
Platinum blonde. My roots were showing within 2 days. It’s still a miracle my hair didn’t break off at the roots when I dyed it back.
Middle State/MomZombie says
Pretty much my entire life has been a hair atrocity of one sort or another. I’ve had prairie pauper braids, freaky big perms, Sun-In orange hair, way-too-blond hair, boy short hair, way-too black hair, stringy long hair, and that ratted out nest some sported in the early ’90s.
Aunt Snow says
My hair atrocity story –
In 1975 I graduated college and moved to New York City – where all the stylists whose names I read in Vogue were located.
I saved up my money and booked an appointment at Cinandre – and hopedmy short blonde hair would be transformed into the short cuts I’d admired.
I sat in the chair and watched in the mirror as my stylist cut. And cut. And cut – tiny snippets of hair, here and there, all over my head. After about a half hour, when my snuck a look in the mirror it looked great.
But he kept snipping, and snipping, and snipping. “He’s just cleaning it up,” I told myself. But he snipped and snipped and snipped.
Finally, after an hour and a half, there was not a hair on my head longer than 3/4 of an inch. I looked like an egg. Mortified, I paid him the outrageous $75 AND tipped him, and left, bursting into tears outside.
In the next two weeks, I cringed as people turned to stare at me in the street. One notable time, I was crossing a Manhattan street and a guy loading a truck yelled across the street at me, “Ayyyy! Joan of Ahhhhrc!”
The funny thing is, after two weeks of growing out? It was the best haircut I’ve ever had in my entire life.
SoberMomRocks says
Did you know that colors that say “ash” have a green base? And that if you’ve spent most of the late seventies bleaching out your naturally brown hair to a strawlike yellow and you try to go back to brown with an “Ash Brown Lady Clairol” that you’ll end up with GREEN hair?
Not that I would know anything about that but I’ll bet there are NO pictures…I’m just guessing you understand…