Samhain Publishing Ltd Weblog

BAD HAIR WEEK

I got my hair cut for the big Romantic Times Convention next week. It sucks, no doubt about it. Honestly, I don’t know why I felt the need to change my style, I had a perfectly good cut. I could roll it into a cute bob, or leave it curly if I wanted. On bad hair days I could pin it up—I was going for that Mrs. Lovett look in Sweeny Todd, just a couple of more inches and I could have had it down.

But I wanted something new, different, hip and chic. Something that says I am a happening, with it, kind of menopausal old lady. In actuality, I look more like Little Orphan Annie’s mother, my frizzy red corkscrew curls a reminder of the bad perms of the seventies—yeah, I was around then, and old enough to have a perm.

Why is it that I had planned to lose 30 pounds, take ten years worth of wrinkles off my face, and blossom into a fabulous woman of indeterminate age in just 7 days? I saw Priscilla Presley on Dancing with the Stars. She scared me. She’s had so much work she could barely talk, her cheeks didn’t move a bit when she tried to say something, and any semblance of a smile was right out. The stuff nightmares are made of.

Sigh. But is aging gracefully an option? I remember the Dove commercials of a few years ago, one had a beautiful grey-haired lady, and I thought she looked just wonderful for a woman in her fifties…then I read that she was just forty-five. Not good to be thought of as a decade older, even if the word beautiful was included.

Which is why I appreciate the anonymity of writing. In my mind, in front of my computer screen, I can be as glorious as I imagine, and if I don’t have the light on or get any glare, not even the glimmer of my true self breaks in to upset my musings. No one ever knows if I don’t have on my make-up, or if I am wearing my baggiest sweats, the ones I bought two sizes too big, just because I liked the extra belly room.

But I am still faced with the problem of my hair. I can make the style work, with a lot of hairspray and two different curling irons. I will survive, and it will grow, and maybe, in a few more years, I’ll get that Mrs. Lovett look. There was an insane sort of elegance to the mess…and I know she never once worried that the rain would make it frizzier. :)

Gia