A personal history of bad hair

A person’s haircut says something about them.

I hope that thought is as scary for you as it is for me. I’ve had haircuts that have ranged over the years from mangy to horrifying, most of them not looking remotely like the haircut in the picture I gave the stylist.

But life is like a haircut: You never know what you’re going to get. And the best parts of your life are the ones that happen when you’re not expecting them.

The early years

I was bald the first two years of my life. I suppose, looking back, you could say I was setting the precedent for taking my time doing everything later in my life, from hitting puberty to getting my driver’s license. I am, by nature, a late bloomer.

After I started getting hair, I was compensated for the previous baldness by constantly having my hair rolled wet onto curlers and teased into an Aryanfro. Fortunately this didn’t last long, because the ’80s ended and so did my stint looking like a child of them.

I think most people my age (those of us born between 1985 and 1989) identify with the ’80s, even though we don’t remember much of them. I’m not sure why this is. But I’m pretty sure the hair sticks out in our memories more than anything else.  

Elementary haircuts

A while after that, my parents went through a “rough financial times” phase, as many parents do, during which one of the first luxuries to go was having their children’s hair cut by people who know how to hold scissors.

This yielded several strange cuts of bangs and unequally long sides. I can’t say looking like a beaver for several years was the reason I was a social misfit, but it must have had some impact on the way I turned out.

In any case, this phase was followed by my parents’ “If it’s going to look like this, why spend any money on our child’s haircut?” phase, which coincided with my “perms look cool” phase, a lethal combination.

A throwback to the ’80s when throwing back to the ’80s wasn’t cool yet, this haircut signified my unintentional precociousness for horrible future throwback trends.

I also had a pair of bug-eyed sunglasses while everyone would still run away upon seeing someone wearing them, sported gaucho pants soon after the 1999 movie “Never Been Kissed” mocked them and owned a horde of Christmas sweaters way before IU students were wearing them to bad-sweater parties.

A girl’s hair becomes a woman’s

After the perm disaster grew out, I only had one remaining remnant of childhood hair embarrassment: my thick bangs.

As they grew out and my adult teeth grew in (I was a freshman in high school – I’m not kidding), I thought I would be rid of my humiliating childhood experiences with mishandling head growths. I would bleach my hair, as was popular at the time, and look like a whole new person.

Of course, you see where this is going. It turned a particularly unattractive color of yellow, which took until halfway through college to grow out of my long blond hair.
And by the time I had grown it out, I was sick of it. On an impulse, I cut much of it off and died it blue.

And that’s where I am now. In my last attempt at rebellion before I have to look like a professional, I’m living up what I’m scared will be the last year I can make ridiculous decisions whenever I want. But whatever life throws my way after this, I’m sure it will bring plenty more screwy haircuts.