the hair.

Ever since I was a little girl, my hair has been kind of a big deal.  People would stop my mom at the grocery store to comment on the girls with the "thick, red hair".  My sister and I lucked out in the recessive gene department (she has strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes, I got the auburn hair and green eyes -- thanks Mom and Dad!), and there has been no end to the comments about it since we were kids.

The hair is a mixed blessing, however.  Mine is very thick and wavy, and is riddled with awkward cowlicks.  It took me for-eh-verrrr to learn how to tame it in the slightest, which was especially difficult at a longer length.  It soaked up hair products like a plant that hadn't been watered in weeks.  The natural body and texture can at times make my hair poofy; the cowlicks can make it difficult for stylists to cut.  That said, I have had many different cuts ranging from almost elbow length hair with terrible bangs curled under with a 1" curling iron to collar bone length hair with a center part (bad choice!).

Here, follow me on an adventure through styles past:

This is how my hair was styled throughout most of my undergraduate experience.  I believe I instructed the stylist to give me long layers.  I stupidly washed this everyday, which meant that it was always dry and a little frizzy.  Do you see that slight bump at the crown?  That is natural, folks.  I did not tease my hair.  I brushed it.  On a side note, I really miss those frames.

This is the natural texture of my hair, y'all.  And yes, I do miss having hair this length sometimes.  I kept this angled bob for a while in my last year of undergrad.

 

Here I am making an awful face, but my hair is straight.  I had just moved to the east coast to start graduate school and was spending lots of time alone reading, hence the terrifying facial expression here.  

I finally chopped my hair in the winter of 2008 and for some reason started to feel more like myself.  I kept enough length to still wear my hear in its natural state and was reassured in the feeling I had by compliments about how the haircut "looks just right for you".  

This was essentially the same cut as above but with my hair straightened.  Why, yes!  Those are fox "ears"! 

In December of 2008, I decided it was time to go even shorter, so I went in with an asymmetrical cut in mind.  I really liked this cut, but found it difficult to keep up with, so it really only lasted for about three months before I changed things up again.

Every time my hair grows out a little, it gets what I lovingly call "flippy things" around my ears.  In fall of 2009, I was decidedly dealing with hair of a flippy nature.

And this photo begins the quick progression (regression?) to ever shorter hair.  Once I made it here, all I wanted was shorter hair for the ease of styling it.

By the fall of 2010, I was sporting an actual "pixie" cut, which started a strong move towards a different style than I had been sporting before.  Everything I chose was more tailored and much more feminine, probably to offset the boyishness of my hair.  I also started experimenting much more with makeup at this point.

This photo documents the shortest my hair had ever been (up to that point!).  I loved the ease of getting ready but was admittedly self-conscious about exposing so much of my face.

My hair vacillated in between the length in the former photo and what you see here for quite a while.  Around November of 2011, I decided to see what growing out my hair would yield...

And this was as far as I got before deciding that I hated it.  It didn't suit the aesthetic I was going for in my style at all, and despite compliments I was getting from folks, I chopped it all off again in June. 

 
I am not sure if I will get bored and try to grow it out again in the future.  I cannot imagine cutting it shorter than it is now, but we'll see...