Girly Stuff

I finally got my hair cut today (though it doesn't really show in this picture...it really IS shorter).

I always go through angst when I have my hair cut. I hate the question: "how do you want it cut?" I don't know from hair. I just tell them how long I want it and that I want bangs. It's a crapshoot. Sometimes it turns out the way I want it, sometimes it doesn't, but since it still has vestiges of a natural curl, it usually does what it wants anyway.

My mother set and styled my hair until I was about 18 years old. When I was supposed to be entering the convent, my biggest fear (and this should have been kind of a big clue that I was not cut out for convent life!) was not that I couldn't do the work, or that I might miss my family or that I didn't know if God had really selected me, my biggest fear was that I would have to do my own hair for the first six months and I wasn't sure I knew how to do it. It was no big deal. As I recall at the time I set two pincurls on each side of my head and that was pretty much it. But fear of doing my own hair was one of the big things that kept me out of the convent.

I never really learned "girly stuff." My mother has never looked anything but completely put together. She goes to the hairdresser once a week, gives herself a manicure once a week, She has shoes for every occasion and a closet full of perfectly pressed clothes, with all sorts of coordinating pieces that match.

She buys most of her clothes at the Hospice of Marin thrift shop, so though her closets are full of clothes, it's not like she spends a fortune on them. She just has a great clothes sense and knows how to wear clothes and coordinate an outfit.

I have five pairs of black sweat pants (most with dog claw holes in them), one pair of non-sweat pants that I rarely wear because they need to be ironed and a pair of faux velvet pants, my good pants, which I've had, again, for about 10 years and which are going to fall apart any.day.now, but which I wear to most theatrical productions because I can't find another pair like them. I have three drawers of t-shirts and a handful of what might loosely be called "blouses," though most of the ones in my closet no longer fit.

I don't wear skirts because my legs look like this:

See how the skin darkens as you go lower on the leg? I asked a doctor about that and he explained the problem (which turns out to be "something that a lot of my older patients have" and another one of those old age things I have learned to live with). Pants cover it up, skirts don't, though thinking about "squat toilets" on the China trip makes me wonder if I should buy a skirt.

Until last week when I got my Wicked Witch of the East shoes, my "new" shoes were 10 years old Birkinstocks. My walking shoes were chewed up by some puppies a couple of years ago, but I keep wearing them because I hate shopping for shoes. My "good" shoes were purchased when I was still working for Women's Health (I quit there in 1996) and they are finally starting to look worn outside, though the lining inside has looked like it was home to a family of moths for years (creating embarrassment when I have to put them through the scanner at the airport).

But I don't know how to shop for clothes. I couldn't coordinate an outfit if I had to and I usually stand in a clothes shop, look around, and then leave because I'm too embarrassed to admit that I don't know what I'm looking for. I did manage to buy a couple of things for the Russia trip (including the aforementioned iron-needing pants), but when I got them home, they didn't look the way I thought they would. My mother has taken me shopping (before it started to be painful for her to walk) and I would buy the things that she gushes over, though I never wear them when I get home because they just aren't me...and she usually took me to shops that don't carry clothes big enough for me anyway.

I don't wear makeup, mostly because I'm blind without my glasses and so I can't see to put makeup on!

As for hair, I'm a total dork. And I never learned how to use a hair dryer. The best haircut I ever got was when the kids were all in school. Some high priced hairdresser had come to a local beauty shop to give a demonstration on how to cut naturally curly hair, but when his model failed to show, someone grabbed me as I walked past on the way to the supermarket and asked if I could be their model. Free haircut for me. Though the stylist kept up a running stream of conversation with the hairdressers about how he didn't understand how any woman would let herself be seen in person like I looked (as if I coudln't hear what he was saying), it was the best haircut I ever had. That's when I learned that there is such a thing as "cutting to the curl."

For many years I thought I was sounding so smart by asking to have my hair "cut to the curl," but nobody ever really knew how to do it. So I stopped asking for that and just tell them how short I want it and ask them to "layer it." I don't know what that is exactly, but if they do it right, my hair usually looks better. They always fix it so that the hair sweeps back behind my ear, despite the fact that I always brush my hair forward. I fix that with a shower. Sometimes they brush bangs for me, usually not. That, too, can be fixed by a shower.

Growing up I was a real girly girl. I always had to have dresses that "twirled," the frillier the better. But somehow along the line there was a fashion disconnect between me and the rest of the world.