I had an afro in 4th grade. Yep, little blond white girl with a 'fro.

I'm sorry about your head, jrossi, but I'm betting it's not as bad as you think and you're probably cute as the proverbial button.

I bet you were adorable! Did you put it in puffs? Afro puffs are my all time favorite 'do.

Sadly, this is not an overreaction. Even mr. rossi noticed and he does not have an eye for such things. It's as bad as the time Olivia Walton decided to get a perm and looked so awful that she went to Hester for help and Hester just laughed at her and taught her how to tie a turban.

I should go check out the site misslynnster posted. Maybe they'll have a picture of Mrs. Walton in a turban. That would be awesome.

Remember back in the 80s when some people had little rat-tails sticking out of the back of their heads? Like a teeny tiny strip of long hair, with all the rest of the hair on the head cut quite short?

I was one of those people.

I did it on purpose. I also had it bleached and braided.

To the best of my knowledge, there are no surviving pictures of me with that do.

Um, yeah. I had the one bmarkey mentions too.

I'm telling you all right now that I will fucking win this thread.

My graduation picture. If you look closely, you'll see my attempt at Duane Allman sideburns.
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When i was a kid my mom was taking haircutting class at Queens Community College.
Let me just cut to me crying and her promising to buy me a hat.
She never bought me a hat.
She's bought me some since.
She still has the scissors.
i will let her cut it straight because it's all she can do, and believe me, i am thankful for that. It was not easy.
i do not cut my hair straight.
i really need a haircut.

Honey, i have lived through so much bad hair i can't even start.
Let me tell you about the time i was in lock up on the way to a show in Chicago with at least a cup of metallic colored pomade on my head and little else--

i kind of dig your hair, bmarkey.

Look at you, rockin' the wide lapels, bmarkey!

I will buy a hat for your inner child, eth. A knit one with kitty ears.

Wait, wait, what about when my mom decided i should look like Linda Evans--
oh, the fucking Dorothy Hammill--
no, wait, the first perm--

i don't think my mom had enough dolls, if any, ever. Maybe too many.
i don't know, all i can say is it was fucked. Fucked, i tell you!

*adds hat to ear collection*

My hair is relatively calm in that pic. Somewhere I have a shot, from around the same time, of me and some friends riding in someone's convertable. I look like Bozo's hippy nephew.

jrossi4r, that pic comes straight from the summer of 1978, when wide lapels were the onlyest kind around.

heh. i had a dorothy hamill haircut. it was ferociously horrible. and then i had a chick-mullet, the kind where the back of my hair was all long and straight and just the bangs, crown and temples back to about my earline were short fuzzy spikes.

ugh. oh and then i had full-on 80's hair metal hair... think, oh, the bangles, only bigger.

i've fucked up my own hair so badly that i just shrugged and shaved it all off. thankfully at that time i had a collection of wigs and was also moonlighting as a go-go dancer in a goth club.

Shortly after I had moved to a new town, I went to the barbershop on Saturday morning to get a haircut. The following Monday, a coworker commented that I'd gotten a haircut. He wondered if I'd gone to the barbershop next to the breakfast counter, across the block from the 2 a.m. Club.

I said that yes, I had.

"Yeah, that looks like Jimmy's work. Everyone in town knows Jimmy's a drunk, so nobody goes to him anymore."

My Dorothy Hamill

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Alright, Triode just made me laugh out loud. I think I can sleep now. Thanks guys. You're the best. I'll check in for further hideousness in the morning. *mwah*

Arsey! You're a heart throb! So cute.

That's so cute, that is not the Ham-ill, not the even all around curled under thing that makes you look like the guy in the ski mask on Fat Albert.

Triode's got the funny.

When my hair first grew in, I had a baby jewfro until I was about 2 and then it went wavy until the hormones kicked in when I was 12 1/2. Chupahija decided that I wasn't "kempt" and told the hairdresser to cut it....aiee! I looked like Orphan Annie with a mullet. My senior year, I put my foot down, refused to have it cut and it wasn't touched for another five years until my first trip to London...the stylist said he wanted to cut off five inches, but thought I'd scream if he did. I realized later that I do need to control split ends, but I don't get trims as often as I should. One time I walked into the place in the Westside Pavilion and the stylist blew my hair dry (which should NOT be done with curly hair) straight into a "Rachel"--ick! But it washed out.

I'm having mine cut again today, just a trim and tidy, by my lovely hairdresser, Richard. It'll probably be the better part of £50 for that, but I've felt so much better about my hair since I've been having it cut properly that it's worth it.

I hate nearly every haircut I get. As a consequence, I rarely get my hair cut. In the meantime, I try to trim it myself or just let it get increasingly shaggy until my partner demands that I get it cut.

But there's a certain kind of shagginess that I think looks kinda good. I just wish I could figure out how to achieve this intentionally.

Once or twice I've had a cut I've really liked. But even with photos, no one has been able to reproduce it.

One of my best haircuts was the first one I ever gave to myself. For a moment, I knew exactly what I wanted, and I was able to realize via a complicated series of medicine cabinet and hand-held mirrors. I've yet to repeat that feat.

jrossi4r--I'm NEVER happy with my haircut, and always wish I'd done something different with it by the time I leave the barber's. But then in a couple of days it gets better, starts coming into the shape I want it to, and then I don't Hate it so much.
The worst cut I got was the one I gave myself when I was in the fifth or sixth grade, and wanted to take some hair off from the sides, and I ended up with two holes where the hair was supposed to be which resembled "Pacman", or so the other kids told me.

I'm sure you can go back to that hairstylist and get it done just the way you wanted it to. Or, beat the shit out of the hairdresser--whichever one makes you feel better:)

Even as I type this, my hair looks pretty silly. I'm trying to grow it.

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My college friend went to a Kwik-Cuts type place to get her hair trimmed and layered. She must have gotten one straight out of beauty school, because when she came back, the back of her hair was cut 2 inches shorter than the front, in a slope. Sort of like this. She paid for it, for some reason, and let me trim it up for her instead of walking around for 3 weeks with a big head scarf.

I ranted about a shitty haircut here last year. I was SO PISSED. That shitty haircut was the last straw in my long line of bad hair salon experiences, and I haven't set foot in one since. I tried cutting my own hair (I mean, really, it could not be any worse) and it came out really cute, so I've cut it myself 3 times since. It's just a blunt Cleopatra style, so it's easy to do myself. If I ever want layers again though...ugh.

I'm still pissed about the attitude that hairdresser gave me in the comment I linked to. I don't think I mentioned the attitude. I was all wtf when I saw how short she was cutting my hair, and she got all snippy (heh) with me and acted liked I was crazy and a bitch because I couldn't see that what she was doing was exactly like the photo. I mean, she was a total fuck about it. Until my daughter, who just happened to be in the next chair (unbeknownst to my stylist) freaked when she saw my hair and screamed 'Why is it so short???'. And then my stylist finally shut the hell up about my hair.

No I didn't pay. Yes, I got a free coupon thingy for a free haircut next time. As if there was ever going to be a next time. I HATE YOU JESSICA!

Don't even get me started on the Little Orphan Annie/poodle perms my mother used to give me. Scarred me for life...

When I was a kid, I used to have this weird cut where my head was buzzed, except I had bangs. My entire little league team got it done together. I guess it was a bonding thing.

My mom went to one of those kwikee-cut places and raved and raved about the stylist, who was Asian, spoke no English and had given her a wonderful cut. So she made me go to her too, although I was deeply dubious. Well. I didn't know that mullets were so popular in China. I came back over to my mothers to show her the total horror that had been wreaked on my hair - she had, like, curled it all up as well as mulleted it out the yin yang - and my brother just busted out laughing the minute I walked in the door. "You look like a country western singer!" he said when he could breathe. "One of the really trashy ones from the 70s."

Yeah. It was great. My mom gave me the money to go to Gregory, my utterly adored surprisingly heterosexual expensive British stylist and get it fixed and even he could barely save it. I feel your pain.

When I was a kid, my dad took me to Anthony Richards Barbershop, a real old-school barbershop in my new-school town, replete with candy-cane pole, antique chairs, car magazines, and a UHF tv perennially tuned to Bonanza or Get Smart. Tony wore spread collars unbuttoned as far as decorum would permit, and several gold chains in his salt-and-pepper chest hair; I was never sure whether he smelled like the barbershop, or the barbershop smelled like him. Dick always had a different moustache, corduroy suits, and clumsy hands. He could usually be found having a cigarette out front, talking to the beauty shop girls next door.

There was a poster on the wall, another antique, advertising Breck shampoo. On it was a golden-haired boy, who looked surprisingly like me. "My Daddy Comes Here Too," it read, and under that, "BRECK." I always identified with that kid, because my daddy did indeed go there, too, and the kid on the poster looked like me. Same haircut, too.

I hated that haircut, but these barbers were of the "long or short" variety. You could tell 'em you wanted it over the ears, or tapered on the neck, and they might remember or try and decide to go with what they knew. Don't get me wrong; they were generally precise, but their expertise ran just long and short.

At least they gave us lollipops afterwards.

Here are some pictures, illustrative of nothing in particular, though they feel appropriate to this thread.

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I have spent the last 2 years in San Francisco COMMUTING to Los Angeles for haircuts because the first 3 stylists here didn't know how to cut my hair. More than once, they gave me a FREAKING MULLET. And I am CLEARLY not a mullet girl. Finally, I just felt so defeated I stopped doing my hair and got really depressed whenever I looked in the mirror.

About a month ago I got a sliver of hope when I met someone whose hair I liked. I went to her stylist and she did a GREAT job! The cut is really nice and I love love love the color! I feel human again for the first time in ages. I can't tell you how relieved it's made me feel, I really did feel so defeated. I felt like such a bag lady when I stopped doing my hair, but I couldn't take ONE MORE MULLET!

So I totally empathize with what you're going through. A bad haircut shouldn't bother us that much... but wow, they suck. :(

jrossi, I can sympathize. I've had some hair nightmares. On my wedding day I was platinum blonde. Every strand was this fake, yellow blonde. I was in an in-between phase. I was desperately trying to stay blonde, but my natural color was getting darker and darker, and my hair stylist thought it would be a good idea to color the entire thing this very light blonde, a week before my wedding day! Big mistake. I still hate my hair, and my makeup, in my wedding photos. I feel sorry for my husband. He must have wondered who that scary person was coming down the aisle. I don't do hideous eye makeup and whacked out I Dream of Jeanie tendril-hairdo's in real life

Wedding picture.

::Cry::

In the eighth grade I had a mullet. I must get the picture from my mother so I can post it. It was a very, very sad haircut. My school picture from that year was hideous. I think I had navy blue eyeliner on at the time. I was a fast child.

For most of my life, I've always had pretty good hair, except for the mullet and the bleached blonde period. My hair has always been one of my best assets. It was always long, blonde and wavy, and their was a ton of it. I started getting highlights around 20, and they looked very natural because my virgin hair color was still very light.

Once, around the time I was 21 or so I had mixed up an appointment for my scheduled highlight before a cruise to Mexico. I had no choice but to go on the cruise with somewhat dark roots. When the ship ported in Key West, my friend and I bought a highlight kit at the drugstore. She touched up my roots in the cabin, and it looked FABULOUS.

When I got home and it was time for another highlight I decided I would buy the inexpensive kit instead of paying 80 bucks to have it done professionally like I had been doing. When it was time to remove the cap, it got stuck in my hair. My hair was long, halfway down my back, super fine, and tangled easily. I could not get it out to save my life. I was in tears. My parents were laughing, but sympathetic. I tried conditioner, I tried to blow it dry since my hair is more manageable when it was dry. I think I melted the cap with the hair dryer. It still wasn't coming out, no matter what I did. I had to call my friend Wendy at 9 o'clock at night. She had to cut it out. It was so stuck, she had to cut some of my hair also. So, we decided on a shoulder length, layered cut. I was crying inside. All of my hair was being cut off. I was depressed. But, everybody loved it, so I recovered quickly.

My hair isn't as nearly beautiful as it used to be in my younger years. I have gray at the temples, it's becoming more fine, and the color isn't as pretty. The older I get, the darker it becomes. It's an ashy, dishwater, blah color.

Here are some pictures I took of myself. Why? I don't know. This is what my hair looks like now, and for the last three years or so.

Dork in a dusty mirror.

I keep it this length and this color, except for one time when I cut is shorter. I don't like my hair short. It isn't becoming on me.

I never try to economize when it comes to haircuts and color. I've learned my lesson. I go in for color and highlights every seven weeks, and pay a pretty penny. I used to go every five! It's an expense I am happy to pay after the frosting cap disaster.

The good thing about hair, is that it grows quickly. I'm betting you'll like it better when the color is corrected.

Have you had your pampering yet? Bubble bath, glass of wine/cup of tea, whatever relaxes you? When a designated pampering treatment fails to deliver, you need pampering. STAT.

Hair disasters: When I was seven, my mother abruptly decided to cut my long flowing hair... in a sad crooked bob with bangs... the week of school photos. Immortalized forever!

As a teenager, I had one long stretch of intentional bad hair choices: blue, black, eggplant, platinum, Lucille-Ball orange, chopped off, tapered, long and standing straight up (which required me to fling myself head-down from something and go two-fisted with the Aquanet, and remain upside-down until the spray set. Head rush!), partially shaved, attempted dreads, bleached, stripped, streaked.

These days, I recognize that my hair takes best to a simple cut, and because it's curly-wavy I can get away with a not-too-great cut. In a pinch, I can cut it myself. Anything goes, unless you cut it too short.

Like that one time.

By the time the stylist saw me, my hair had been washed, so it was plastered down straight. I described the style I wanted and the maximum she should cut, and emphasized that it would curl right up into curly-cues when it dried. Really. Curly. With curls in it.

She started cutting. By the time I got my glasses back and saw what she had done, I knew it was too late.

Suddenly, the stylist giggled nervously. "Hey, this one piece dried and curled up all the way above your ear!"

I sighed and reminded her that yes, they were all going to do that. "All of it? That curly?" Yes. All of it. That curly. Like I said. "Oh." She cut in silence.

Oh is right. Some women can pull off a boy-cut. I looked like the kid from The Wonder Years.

I do hair stuff myself for several of the reasons above. I trim it or color it on a super pms day when I hate myself and my hair anyway- it cuts out the middleman.

I dyed my hair a month ago and just noticed a couple of fresh silver hairs an inch and a half long. The regular brown hair grows maybe 1/8 inch a month. wtf?

My Dad used to tell the story of coming home without his keys and ringing the bell the day that his new bride (Susan, my mom) had, unbeknownst to him, gone for a special cut & perm at the salon. She opened the door, beaming.

He blinked at the stranger opening the door of his house and, confused, said, "Oh, I'm sorry; is Sue home?"

She sobbed and sobbed.

(p.s. I complimented my mom yesterday on a smashing new haircut and style, and she got mad as a wet hen. Turns out, the stylist cut it far shorter than specified and in doing so trimmed off all her usual perm. She hates it. But she looks fantastic, younger and fresher and quite lovely. But she doesn't see her same old self when she looks in the mirror, so she thinks it's ugly.)

That's funny, Elsa. When I tell my mom her hair looks pretty, she blushes and smiles and I know I've just balanced out a month of evil acts on Ma'at's scale; complimenting my mom is one of the keys to the afterlife. Unless you're not me or my dad or my brother, in which case I'll have to kick your ass and go compliment my mom to make up for it.

Remember 1995, when Newt Gingrich was all over the news? Do you remember his half-sister Candace Gingrich, the dyke activist who wrote a book, and appeared on the Friends episode with the lesbian wedding as the officiant?

I went to a barbershop in the Castro to get a haircut some time that year. It was my usual spot, but my usual barber had left recently. The man who cut my hair obviously had no idea what to do with the female of the species - in any context. I can only imagine his internal dialogue as he started to cut, but the end result was he made me look *exactly* like ... Candace Gingrich.

I've never been one for hair product, but after that 'do I had to use it in self-defense. Gingrich was all over the press (LGBT and straight) at that time. It spawned a new party game - in any queer crowd, I could ask "Hey! What famous lesbian am I?" and then quickly shift all my hair forward. Invariably the entire group would bust out laughing.

Except for the one guy who didn't get it. He said, "I don't know, Alice B. Toklas?"

I've had awful cuts (usually too short), perms (Toni!), Dorothy Hamills, mullets, rat tails and weird colours. I think part of my problem is that I have a skewed view of myself and have no idea what's really flattering.

Right now it's at mid-shoulder blades, with bangs and not coloured.

Well, after three long hours of hard work by the salon owner, my hair is now...brown. It was all they could do without my hair falling out. I hate it. Brown is a lovely color on many, many people. I am not one of those people. I look old and mousey and washed out. But at least it's a color found in nature. They had bleached out my roots (JUST the roots) so bad that when the owner saw it the first thing she asked was, "Does it burn?" And the haircut was so crooked that she had to take off a few inches just to even it up.

BUT...it's just hair. It'll grow back. I was more pissed at the attitude of the stylist than anything. After she realized she'd screwed up and her excuses failed to placate me, she said, "Well what do you want me to do?" And, just like in iconomy's case, I was at a loss, because I WAS PAYING HER GOOD MONEY TO KNOW WHAT TO DO. So I told her I didn't know what she should do, but I was going to find someone who did and that I would be sending her the bill.

Your horrible tales have lifted my spirits and reminded me of all the times my hair has been worse. The home perms. The Belinda Carlisle bob with the rat tail down the side. The "ears cut out" look which was basically a femullet and made me look like Bono at Red Rocks.

This thread is a good time. And I love the pictures. (Lori, despite the fact that you were clearly sporting someone else's hair entirely, you were a lovely bride.)

I'm glad it feels better, jrossi.

Like Lori, I wish I had the hair of 4-year-old me. It's not fair that hair ages along with the rest of us. Oh, to be a natural platinum blonde again....

Glad you're feeling better jrossi. The brown will probably fade to a nice blonde, since the color underneath has little to hold onto. The cuticle is stripped when hair is dyed blonde.

mudpuppie, you were, and still are, adorable!

Ha! I just found this. This is the cruise hairdo after my friend highlighted it. Check out the bangs. Check out the jerky boyfriend. Jesus, thank god that relationship didn't last. In retrospect, I was way too gorgeous to stay with him. ;-)

Ugh, my comment above isn't nice. In fairness and respect for ex-boyfriend. He knows I would call him an A-hole, but I shouldn't have put his pic up.

I deleted it from my photobucket page, but I can still see the pic? Is is because I have it saved elsewhere on my computer? I hope it isn't visible to the rest of the bunnies.

I can still see it too, Lori. It's not that big of a deal, methinks.

OK, I'm so impulsive about these things. I feel bad about posting it. I feel bad about everything. :)

I get a "page not found," Lori, so I think it's gone unless people already have it in their browser cache.

That said, you look as pretty as always, despite the circumstances.

Thanks BP. That is a relief.

Oh, and chuckdarwin? You have awesome hair. Stop your bitchin'.

Mine is basically just astroturf for the head- no styling involved. It's safer that way, and it minimizes the bald spot. (Well, as much as is possible.)

Great photo LoriFLA! And pupps is keeeling me. :)

Okay... if I get the energy to dig through boxes, maybe I can find a photo of me with my old (but very old!) Annie Lennox hair. That was interesting.

I want to see the Annie Lennox hair!

So do I!

hee. I think I must have a photo somewhere... I'll see if I can dig it out (and if I come across the photo of mr. taz as reed-thin callow youth with his wispy fu-manchu goatee, woe is him!). I'll look tomorrow. er. today. Whatever. It's 4 a.m.; why am I awake?