I was born a curly-haired girl in a land of high humidity.
And thus began the long and windy odyssey of...my hair. Short, long, curly, straightened, au natural, or tamed with product. My hair has always been a constantly evolving work-in-progress. Unlike most women (like Mommy) who have had the same hairdo for most of their lives, I've never had the same haircut twice. I believe that this is partly due to the creativity of my hairdresser for the last 15 years, Jesse, but also to the fact that can never decide what I want to look like. And I'm never satisfied. Sigh...
Here, thanks do the diligent use of my scanner, is a pictorial essay I will call...
The Hair of Me
In the beginning, there was blonde...

And bangs.

Cute, but short-lived.
Followed by the bangless awkward period...
Eventually, I convinced Mama to take me to an actual hairdresser, instead of cutting it herself, and the Farrah-inspired-hot-roller period evolved...

Notice that, despite the AquaNet and hot rollers, the humidity-induced frizz still abounds.
In college, my style devolved into a hippie-dippie-drama-girl-disco-be-damned look...

SOOOO dramatic. And stylefree.
It's at this point that you might start noticing the other hair on my head that has a mind of it's own...the eyebrows - crazy, man.
When I left college and started acting/modelling professionally, I made an attempt to do a little something with the hair, but unfortunately, there was still the frizz...

...and the eyebrows. Jimmy calls this my Vampire Look.
[NOTE ABOUT THE HEADSHOT - The one big perk for parents of actors is that they regularly get attractive, professional photographs taken. My mother had all of my headshots framed and arranged on a bookshelf. I called it The Shrine. Creepy. For actors, the headshot is a nightmarish experience, neatly drawing together all of the actors greatest insecurities - looks, talent, marketability - and defining them in one single 8 X 10 glossy. It's ridiculously important to get a great headshot, and a tremendous amount of cash is invested. A good headshot is supposed to look like you, but not too much like you. Like you at your very best. An uber you. In theory.
Some of the following pictures were quite good. Others were MOST unfortunate. You can be the judge.]
Finally, in the mid-eighties, my life was saved by the invention of...PRODUCT! Thus spawning a lifelong obsession - mousse, gel, hairspray, straightening gel, curling gel, styling cream - I have drawers filled to the brim with a variety of tubes and jars. I've spent years blending and tweaking to achieve the perfect product cocktail.
Here was a combination of mousse and a diffuser and some ridiculous '80s attitude...

Alas, still frizz. And thankfully, the Ray Bans cover the eyebrows.
At long last, I moved to Los Angeles and removed my hair from the grip of the dreaded humidity. It was at this point that the hair began...to grow.
Big...

Bigger...

Biggest...

This is what I think of as my Seinfeld Hair Period.

Oh dear God, was that a lot of hair.
And then, of course, the hair began to shrink, both on top of my head and my eyebrows...

Until I went too far...

Boy Short. It seemed like such a bold and sassy move. I HATED IT! For one thing, I had to get it cut CONSTANTLY. Drove me nuts. Also, you have to remember that my hair is curly, so in order for it to look cute, I had to blow it straight. So forget the idea of an easy short style. This was majorly labor intensive. And if I didn't blow it out, it did this doofy poofy thing. Sad. And just as soon as I got the new headshots...I grew it out.
Next stop? The Rachel. Naturally.

...which involved wrapping my hair around ginormous Velcro rollers, and massive amounts of products. I used so much Kiehl's Creme with Silk Groom that I think I may have put the Kiehl's children through college.
I went through a brief retro/Elizabeth Taylor thing...

Until the eventual invention of the flat iron. Which I NEVER got the hang of. Evidenced by this horror...

That's me with Jude and Cousin Steve, and looking slightly insane. What the hell was that look? It looks...dirty and...flat and...my only defense is that I must have been extremely sleep deprived with the new baby and all, and I guess I misjudged the amount of product I needed and just wielded that flat iron like a mad woman.
The flat iron didn't last long (duh!) but that evolved into the blow out...

I blew my damned hair out EVERY DAY for years. Until finally, I wised up (or should I say...gave up) and just went curly...

So there you have it. The evolution from short and curly to...short and curly. Sigh.
So much work, so little progress.
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You MUST visit our other spinners this week! There is a wealth of AMAZING and often gravity-defying hair pictures out there. NOT to be missed.
SuziCate at The Water Witch's Daughter
Patty at Pancakes Gone Awry
Stacy at Stacy Uncorked
Vandy J at The Testosterone Three and Me
Jen at Sprite's Keeper - NEW ON FRIDAY!
Peg at Square Peg in a Round Hole - NEW ON FRIDAY!
Jan at Jan's Sushi Bar - NEW ON FRIDAY!
Aimee at AimeeWrites - NEW ON FRIDAY!
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Next week on The Spin Cycle...
Luck
St. Patty's Day is almost upon us, good people. So it seems like the perfect time to think about Luck. The luck of the Irish. Actually, I don't think the Irish are really that particularly lucky - between the Vikings and the Tudors and the whole potato famine thing. So perhaps 'tis all a bit a blarney.
Are you lucky? Do you believe in luck? Is there a time when you were particularly lucky?
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