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Friday, June 3, 2011

hairvolution: i have too much free time.


i uh, i get bored easily.  and when i do, my hair suffers changes.  sometimes drastically, and sometimes in smaller ways.  in fact, i can pretty much chart the year or period of my life in pictures, because of my hair.  soon, you'll see why. 

i was bored the other day, and i went digging through the huge dump of random photos on my hard drive.  and boy, did i find some doozies.

 

why hello junior year of high school, home of the burgundy hair.  it had the effect of highlighting my already ghost-white skin, but hey - it was a good look at the time.  i think.  i know you can't see very well since the photo is black & white, but it was a bit below my boobs at the time.  long.


i went back to my natural red, for senior year of high school.  (that's me and my best friend, there...) i didn't cut it... yet.  i've almost always had long hair.  except for when i get a little stir-crazy and do something like this...


i tend to change my hair the most when something drastic or weird happens in my life.  like a break-up, for example.  senior year of hs i had a very large, drastic break-up (of a relationship of 3 years...), and so my hair got short, quickly.  after this style, i cut my hair even shorter, to chin length.  (note to self:  chin length is NOT a good look.  don't ever do that again.) 


well, it might have been a bit shorter than chin length.  still, not my best look ever.  no, no, no.  (aside:  that there is my favorite t-shirt.  still have it.  it's a bit... hole-y.)

oh, freshman year of college.  xmas, 2003.  (i look so weirdly young in this photo.)  enter the terrible grow-out period.  this is what happens when you have completely black hair, and then try to bleach it out with blonde hair dye.  (no photos of the complete black hair look, unfortunately.  which is a shame, because for the first two weeks my hair had this crazy purple sheen you could see when i was in the sun.)


still freshman year, 2004 this time.  hard to see, but at least the color was a bit better by this time.  more red, less oh-fuck-what-the-hell-did-i-just-do.


2005, sometime.  good example of the "warrior braids" mentioned below.  gah, shoulder length.


2006.  like a yo-yo, i finally got my hair long again, because i've always been more comfortable with longer hair.  so by junior year of college, it looked like this.  (my ex-girlfriend was a photographer, and took this photo.  i likey.)  and bonus, this picture is probably the ONLY picture of me when my back-piece wasn't finished.  i rocked the wings without getting them filled in, because i had no money to get it filled, yet.  that, and they looked good anyway, so i wasn't in a hurry.



still 2006.  (not my bike.  i love cruisers.  i hate crotch rockets.)  notice my crazy white skin, which is the norm when i hide from the sun.  my hair looked great here.  i have thick hair naturally.  which is why it was such a fucking shame, when i went in for a nice professional dye job for once, and the stupid evil motherfucking hair-wrecking idiot stylist persuaded me to try a few layers.  i nervously said yes.  and then she did this to my hair:


she thinned the everloving SHIT out of my hair, and gave me layers so badly that i had more than 6 or 7 inches of hair above my lower layers.  worst hair cut EVER.  (notice:  wings shaded in by now.)
the terribleness is hard to see in this photo, but trust me:  it was terrible.  which is why i wrote a little note to myself as a reminder...



yeahhhh.  and boy, did i mean it.  to this day, i am the most picky person when it comes to people who cut my hair.  and i've only trusted ONE person to layer my hair, since this incident.  alas, she lives in portland.  damnit.
(PS, for any of you Portlandians, she works at Blades Hair Studio, look it up.  if you want to go, ask me for her name, and tell her Mel sent you.  she'd be floored.  we're still buddies.)


senior year of college, 2006.  look, my natural! color!  i've known people for years, who have yet to see my natural color.  i just get bored too often.  and i like it BRIGHT, BRIGHT red.  so bring on the hair dye!  but yeah, you see those shoulder-length layers?  and the rest of my hair was half-way down my back.  terrible look.  in my mind, i would have had to chop it alll off at shoulder length, (which i hate) and start over.  so, i just did this instead:



again, it's hard to see in this photo, but the longest part of my hair was about 5 or 6 inches long. 
(mmm, tasty clove.  back in the chain-smoking days.)
and thus, the years of braids had begun.  you might notice that they are more than a foot longer than the rest of my hair.  there is a story behind this:

since i almost always had long hair, and i'm a fidgety person, i always was braiding small sections of my hair.  i had one friend who always referred to them as my "warrior braids."  (see above pic...)  long ago it was a celtic tradition to put braids in the hair when going to war (so as to keep your long hair out of your damn face).  so when i told him i was chopping off all my hair, he moaned, "but what about your braaaiiiidsss???"   i was like, "eh, i'll keep them.  should look interesting." 
and thus, the four (almost five) years of braids had begun.


2006, super short.  i loved the short hair.  i could spike it up, or mash it under a hat if i didn't feel like dealing with the fact that it was sticking up all over the place, and i didn't want to brush it.  there was a lot of hat wearing in those days.


i was broke, so i let my hairs grow out for a bit.  heh, i almost look normal in this picture.

short aside, about this picture:  this was in January, 2007.  and what happened then?  i wrecked my car.  and when i did, i cracked three ribs, and separated the cartilage of one of them from my sternum.

i have never hurt so badly in my entire life.  combine three cracked ribs with a case of walking pneumonia and chain-smoking... well, let's just say it wasn't pretty. 
because of that, when i did this play (the Vagina Monologues, for the curious), i wore my corset - not because of the look, but so when i breathed, my ribs couldn't move much.  not a pleasant experience.

 anyway.  i got bored with my hair again, so then i did this:


(no, i have no idea what i'm doing in this picture either.)
spring, 2007.  short and messy, again.  i bleached the front part of my hair (and the braids), in order to shortly dye it a fabulous color (seen below).  it was only supposed to be like this for a few days.  but i loved the look so much, i kept it for another month.  who knew red bleached to that color?  not this girl.  



see, hat-worthy.  i have several cowlicks.  they annoy the hell out of amuse me.
it was a good look, i think.  almost kept it, but...


THIS was the color the bleaching was for.  it made the green POP.  which was awesome.  it's also a color i'm sure my mother was horrified by, when she arrived for my graduation and realized that yes, i really WAS going to be graduating with green hair.  and so my graduation announcements went out with this photo:


well that pretty much sums up how i felt about college, senior year.

the bad part about weird colors though, is this:



the horrible, inevitable leaching of your formerly bright crazy color.  and what DO you do, when you're trying to get green and black out of your hair?  well, you cut some of it out, and bleach it some more:



(this was the shortest that my hair has ever been.  ever.) 
yeah, that looked awful, too.  so, back to the black, with some color for good measure.


for the record, this was right after i dyed it.  probably the same day.  so no, my scalp was not permanently burgundy.  i swear. 


annnddd, this photo was after a long, drunken party night.  notice the lovely eyeliner smudges.  and this is what happens when you sleep in makeup, folks.



oh lookee, 2007.  summer.
one of my photographer friends, Charles, wanted a model.  and i got one of the best sets of photos that i've ever taken.  he was a fucking genius.  shot in an old ballroom - but this shot was while i was on a table, with a white backdrop.  most boring backdrop ever - but the picture still looks fantastic.
this is probably the most amazing shade of red that i've ever dyed my hair.  only problem was, i can't remember for the life of me what color, and i've never been able to find it since.
here, lemee find another picture of that in different lighting.



it was so different in daylight.  i mean, definitely not a believable color.  no one is going to think i grew that myself.  but hell, looks SO. AWESOME.

a bit shorter here, too. i really didn't know what to do with shorter hair, and i HATE the grow-out period, so i just kept chopping it off.  but eventually i wanted my longer hair back, so i started to deal with the grow-out mess.  AGAIN.



this picture stands as proof that you really CAN get black hair dye out of your hair without completely destroying it.  i don't care what the stylists say.  it is possible.


may, 2008.  i hate, hate hated this length.  i never know what to do with it.  just ends up frizzing all over the place.  ugh.


see?  frizzy hell.  my hair is just wavy enough to be a pain in the ass.


winter, early 2009, portland.  in the terrible stages of grow-out, still.  was working at a law office, so i kept the crazy hair to a minimum.  almost.  what you can't see in this photo, unfortunately,  is the fact that the braids were in fact the same shade of green that i'd dyed my hair in 2007.  and the law office didn't care.  i was floored.

(that skirt?  vintage seventies, it's from mexico.  it has a PATCHWORK IGUANA on it.  love!)

notice the lack of glasses.  that's because a certain ex-SOMEONE, who will not be named, stepped on my glasses and broke them.  i did eventually get a replacement pair, but not my usual green & black combo, because they didn't have it.  so, purple it was.  the same pair of glasses i still have today, actually.


this what happens when you get really, really bored with your short hair, and you're laid off in the middle of summer 2009, in Portland.  also the braids just get your hair off your neck.  it's a bit cooler, which was really nice.  i actually did these braids myself.  it's a pain.  most of the time i have other people do it.
for a while, i was selling jewelry and crafts and hanging out with a few other sellers.  we'd stake out a piece of the sidewalk, and just chill out. 

i sold beaded hair wraps too, and i had a TON of examples braided into my hair.  so if y'all are into hair wraps, i sell them for cheap, yo.  and they look like this in your hair.  pretty awesome, and i do say so myself.


2009, summer, working for the music festival.  backstage passes, bitches!  ohfuck, my white-ass legs.  eeek!!!  a good example of the omnipresent braids (and my hippie crystals in them) - those suckers stuck around.  and i LOVED them - but you guys have no idea how much of a pain in the ass they are to keep separated from the rest of your hair - and how annoying it is to brush your hair, when you haven't undone them.  it's an exercise in trying not to yank your head around when you catch the braid in your brush.  sheesh.

also, to this day, i have friends in portland who NEVER saw me without the braids.  they would probably be surprised to see me without them now.  most of the reason i finally evened them out with the rest of my hair is that when you aren't wearing them all braided up, they make your hair look uneven, like you had a really bad haircut.  so, no.


summer 2009, portland, oregon.  great example of what happens when you put bright red henna over naturally red hair.  yep.  you get an almost orange color.  and i love it.


back from portland, visiting family.  right before i moved to new orleans in 2010.
FINALLY getting a bit longer, there.


2010, back to green!  a different color of green, this time around.

it was summer, i was working on bourbon street (patooey!) and i was sweating my ass off, so i did this to get the hair off my neck:


ah, much cooler.  what you can't see from this picture is that the braids created a mohawk, which was THE AWESOME.  the green hair (braided up with black) was the underside of the hawk, and the red was on top.


 aha, see?  tell me that does not look fantastic.  one of my favorite looks.  which reminds me, i need to braid my hair up for the summer again.


after the braids, i tried to get the green out of my hair by bleaching, and if you guys remember, it was a really bad idea.  i hated this.  so, back to red.


and i got bored again, so pink!  and purple!  some of the few hair colors my hair had never been before.  
so now, my hair has been all manner of shades of red & burgundy, purple, black, green, pink, and orange (actually orange, not red - which is what happens when you mix red manic panic with a yellow manic panic color that i didn't realize was actually UV reactive, until my hair started glowing green under a black light...).  so i guess i'm missing blue.  blue, brown (never gonna happen, i'd look awful), and blonde.  i should really do that, once of these days.  maybe not together, but i should do it.  just for shits and giggles.

 
 recent photo, early spring 2011.  my friend Crystal took this set, and they look fabulous.  believe it or not, this was shot in a bedroom painted all black, with nothing but a spotlight or two.  no flash on the camera - which is actually why the light is so great in this photo.

of course, i DO get bored... about two days ago, i decided to trim the bottom of my hair a bit, to get rid of dead ends.  i've been cutting hair for about 8 years now - started experimenting on my friends in high school, and got pretty good at it.  so i've cut my friends' hair, my boss's hair once, several boyfriends, and i've gotten paid for it many times.  not a lot, because i don't have a license and i'm not a professional.  but i am good at it.

in honor of this ridiculous photo bonanza dedicated to my random hair, i decided to pep up my hair a bit:


what do you think?

i'm thinking about some weird colors again.  i have pink, purple, and that great peacock green seen way up above.  or should i do blue?  or blonde, or.......

3 comments:

Bubbles said...

You are so. damn. cute.

Satan said...

aw, thanks!
i like to think of myself as charmingly awkward. with a side of "who cares" to smooth out the rough edges.
: ]

Alybrarian said...

Great journey! Glad to see someone else out there also defeated the black hair myth.

Go blue! I entered Spring Hill with blue hair and it was the best litmus test for weeding out the crap people ever.