musing for fun – caeblogs

After eleven months of carrying shoulder length braids (and pretending my hair was much longer than it actually was), I decided it was time to take them out and do something different for a change. I’ve always been a little adventurous with my hair – bleach and dye were once my very good friends – and so it wasn’t much of a surprise that I wanted to do something interesting now that I had my real hair to play with again. But what? My main worry was that I am getting a little too old to have silly hair cuts with splashes of vibrant colours (although judging from my recent black, red and bronze hair, this rule clearly does not apply to braids). I’m already paranoid about looking younger than my age and not being taken seriously. I was concerned that attempting to jazz up my hair could make this worse. But I also figured that if I’m ever going to get away with hair silliness again, this is the time. I don’t want to be in my late thirties, looking back on 2012 and wondering “why oh why didn’t I live a little?” So I went to my hairdresser on Saturday and had the sides of my nape length hair shaved off, leaving only the top/middle section (yes, very girl with the dragon tattoo-esque). Result? One satisfied customer. Reactions? Completely unexpected. Most have been positive but I’ve received a few funny/odd one. The notable one so far are:

• “(gasp) You are so brave! I could never do that to my hair!” (What do you say to that? Thanks?)
• “You remind me of Gina Yashere.” (Great, I remind you of a black woman with short hair. Let’s forget that we look nothing alike!)
• “Did we go back to the 1960s?” (What the hell?)
• “You look like a South London gang member.” (This was from the same person who made the 1960s comment so he clearly went away to think about it and came back with what he assumed was a more acceptable comment. Not!) Continue reading →