So much younger...

Pictures - Me at about 12ish
Tuesday 13th June '06. 75kg

I tried a side parting today, just for a little variety. Somewhat discomfortingly, it looked really good. It made me look perkier somehow, less haggard. My mum said it made me look younger, and by god I was actually genuinely pleased! So it has come to this. I really am old enough to be complimented with “It makes you look so much younger!” I think I will keep the side parting anyway though. It is one small step towards the fifties haircut I dream of. I have booked my annual haircut for a few weeks. I can never wait to get it all cut off. At this time of year it is like a warm blanket on my back and has now gotten to the length I describe as the depressed hippy stage. I just need to get some big heated rollers and I will be ready to go.

It makes me wonder why I never did anything to my hair before. I’ve never even had a proper parting as such, a wiggly line running roughly down the centre of my head was just where my hair fell. Being simultaneously blessed and cursed with shiny, springy, healthy hair, I have always just let it flop, as it is impossible to pin up or style. It is just too heavy and slippery. A half-hearted ponytail is about the best I can manage. I still have to get my mum to plait it for me in hot weather. I just can’t do it. As for anything more permanent like colour or styling, you can forget it. As I am again blessed with poker straight blond hair I am also terrified to screw with it. Much as I have always dreamed of raven curls, any dyes, perms or radical haircuts are right out of the question. I hope heated rollers will work because up until now, all my best attempts to curl it with irons and tongs have failed miserably – it just falls out after five minutes. Still, I need those curls if I am to complete the look.
My worst, and only real, hairstyle occurred when I was about eleven. My mum had just had her dark blond bob violently layered into a sort of shaggy, bedhead mop, which looked so great I immediately wanted the same done to my hair. What the tactful hairdresser neglected to point out to me was that what looked good on my slim, tanned, high cheekboned mother, might not look so good on a pale, chubby eleven year old with huge glasses, a brace and developing acne. When it was all done, I looked in the mirror and wanted to cry. I cannot even think of a decent way to describe how I looked, so I will just say that at least then I was doing the geek thing properly. The worst part was that despite my initial despair, in my general cluelessness regarding anything pertaining to my appearance, I actually kept it like that for several years.



In other news the unthinkable has happened, I have fingernails! All the vitamins I have been pumping myself with must be working as this small feat was formerly impossible. My nails are as soft as butter and bend at the slightest touch but they are there after only a week of not biting them down to bloody stubs, as has been my habit for the past 21 years. Maybe if I have the willpower to keep them like this I will be able to lose weight too?