The Long and Short of It

So not too long ago, I was looking at some comments on another blog. The main post had mentioned that the blogger had gotten her hair cut shorter than she normally does. One commenter mentioned that she thought that long hair does not look good on a woman generally past the age of 28.

I have long hair.

I'm 34.

Am I committing a horrible fashion faux pas with my long hair?

I have had what I consider to be a fairly good relationship with my hair over the years. It mostly does what I want, but it does have the tendency to look better on "normal" days than for special occasions.

While my sister was able to revel in her girlhood with long hair since toddlerhood, for some reason my parents chose a different route with me. For a long while, I had the classic bowl cut. Oh, was that only supposed to be for boys? Well, I bucked tradition because there are more than a few pictures of me with my (then) very blonde hair in the obvious shape of Tupperware.

And then for a very short period, my parents relented and allowed me to have somewhat longish hair, enough to put into some good, curly poytails. I remember that it was actually my father who got my hair done before school, as my mother was a nurse on the graveyard shift and was in bed while we were getting ready. For a man with absolutely no previous experience with rubber bands and the like, he was pretty good.

Somewhere around 5th grade or so, right at about the point I got seriously into playing sports, my hair went short and stayed for a good long while. Through middle school, I suppose it was just a generically short haircut, nothing much to it. Short enough that it was out of my face when I played, and that was mostly what I cared about.

Cut to high school, and I was deeply into alternative/ new wave music. I met my best friend M a few months into the school year, and we had similiar sensibilities about our hair. We wound up going to the same hairsylist, a great guy who although he was gay, would constantly position his crotch near our shoulders while cutting our hair. We couldn't really figure out why, but figured it was part of his fabulous technique. He loved us because we pretty much gave him carte blanche with out hair. I swear we should have been hair models, because some of those cuts were pretty out there. One style on M was a truly asymmetrical cut, with a traditional bob on one side, and short short on the other. On me, a favorite look was something a bit like the one on the left, minus the extremely long bangs. But it was fun, the styles didn't last long because of the shortness of length, and people always commented favorably on our hair.

Going into senior year, I chose probably the worst time to begin growing my hair out. It wasn't too bad, but I am pretty sure that my senior year was probably the worst hair year of them all. It had no particular style, it just hankered to be long, and seemed to take forever to get there. Somewhere along the midway point, I decided to get a spiral perm, which were all the rage back then. I permed for probably five years, then suddenly swore one day that I would never subject myself to paying someone to pour hot, smelly, disgusting liquid onto my head that burned my skin if it crept past the little cloth thingy. Which it invariably did.

Since then my hair has stayed straight and long, no bangs. It mostly goes down to about my bra line, but can stray a few inches up or down. I part it on the side. I don't use a curling iron, or hairspray, or even a hair dryer. I spritz some liquid gel on it when it is wet, let it dry, brush it out, and voila, my hairstyle for the day. Usually halfway through the day at home, it gets on my nerves and up it goes into an extremely unkempt bun.

Hubba-hubba likes it long, and probably takes it for granted that I will just keep it that way. I don't think I will ever go back to extremely short hair, although one should never say anything for certain. And it wouldn't be because he didn't want me to, but because I like it long.

But am I just kidding myself? Are people whispering about me and my "dated" look behind my back? Will I be on Oprah for a bad hair makeover?

I could only wish.