Just a little girl-talk about hair…

~ Hetty Eliot

Why do people care so much about other people’s hair? The other day, I got my hair done, as many people do every so often, and suddenly I became worthy of being fawned over. I didn’t change my makeup, or my clothes, or my personality, or anything, just freshened up my hairstyle. People are always surprised to see I have my hair cut into an actual style. I just pull it back every day because I go to work to WORK and I don’t give a crap about attracting people there. I have literally seen people wearing fake eyelashes to work. Why the heck would you wear fake eyelashes to go earn minimum wage cleaning fitting rooms? Who are you hoping to meet?

Anyway, I like when I get a haircut and people ask me if I’ve ever cut it before. No, I have never cut it, it only grows as long as my upper back, unfortunately, but such is life. And I love this one–when I get highlights, people who saw me the day before will ask if that’s my natural color. Yes, my hair has a tendency to randomly change to a lighter color overnight. I’m not sure what’s worse, the question itself, or the fact people feel comfortable asking a question like that. And it’s usually men who ask that one.

I have… sorta curly hair? If I didn’t take care of it I’d probably look like a crazy cavewoman. And for some reason, people take curly–or God forbid frizzy–hair as a personal affront to themselves, as though it’s contagious and you’ll make it grow out of their heads if you don’t fix it right away. Why don’t they just look the other way then if the danger is so great? So when I get it styled and straightened and lightened, everyone likes me. Yet the joy drains from their face when they ask me if it’s going to turn curly again and I tell them yes. Their pity would almost warm my heart if it weren’t an implication that I look like shit the rest of the time.

I fire this off at midnight, crouched over my computer like the cavewoman that I am, dreading the dirty looks and demeaning questions come the morning….

61 thoughts on “Just a little girl-talk about hair…”

  2. Imagine yourself in my position. You can’t see, so you keep your hair short, and don’t give a damn how you look.

    And yet, people keep telling me that I should grow my hair, because other males are doing it. Like why should I do it? its my head. I’ll decide whether I want to keep my hair short or long.

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  4. I know this is girl talk, and I’m a guy, so . . . but seems like the only equivalent experience might be changing the facial hair–growing a mustache is too gradual but shaving one off gets attention but–strangely–only from people who never knew me without a mustache previously. People who DID know me sans mustache will respond with, did you get a haircut? Or, is that a new shirt, or, did you take a shower? But my favorite was the time I had a full beard and mustache for some time, then shaved the beard only, leaving the mustache. Someone asked me, how did you grow that mustache so fast?
    Welcome back, BTW.

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          1. I don’t comment on weight loss either. For that reason that it might not be a good thing, but I won’t do it even when the person in question clearly wants me to. Like I had a coworker once whom I absolutely hated (to be clear, I hated her for her horrible personality, lackluster job skills, and the way she changed our department culture for worse; I didn’t hate her out of jealousy), and one day she was clearly fishing for compliments on how thin she was. Other coworkers gave them to her, but I just shrugged, said nothing, and made it awkward.

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  6. People paid for that curl in the 80s. I have (had) wavy/curly hair and beat it into submission for years. My last 2 haircuts have been comedic, but this is your story, so I’ll leave them. Sometimes the eyelashes are embedded/glued/weaves so they’re hanging in regardless. Kinda crazy if you don’t have a public eye gig. (Pun alert!) Good to see you, in spite of the hair😜

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    1. Yes 80s hair, that’s exactly what’s wrong 😭😭. I’ve noticed that myself. Anyways those glue-in eyelashes are full of mites! So gross. And I never mind your comedic stories.

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  7. Well, if I knew you in real life, I’d probably get a pass and would probably notice the slightest changes as an ex-hairdresser. But when people used to ask me the same question, I’d reply with the same tone you have.

    “Did you cut your hair?”

    “I did? Is it shorter now? Oh no!”

    or

    “You coloured your hair?”

    “I didn’t! I just tried that new shampoo and my hair is only getting blonder!”

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  9. Oh my, our Orangutan ancestors must have been very keen on orange curly hair else they might have branched off with spider monkeys or those totally perverted Chimpanzees. I shudder to think where we would be if that had happened. So here we are and we still get off on hair but don’t understand why anymore. You can honestly say, it’s not your fault. You evolved nicely, but some of your coworkers, maybe not so much. I have a handle bar mustache now that is the envy of Yosemite Sam, and people tend to notice it and ask me how I get it to curl on the ends. I tell them I was traumatized by a Succubus in an elevator and it’s been that way ever since. I get no more questions and people are always asking me if I would prefer to take the stairs. This makes me wonder about them sometimes. All these years and they still don’t realize I’m a chicanerous old rascal. Have fun, Hetty, and keep ‘em guessing.

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    1. Orange hair! Aaagggghh! Uh I mean if anyone here has orange hair, it’s lovely, but otherwise, gingers steal souls. I don’t know how much worse chimps could be than we are and they’re horrible!

      When I see unique looking people, I say to myself, there’ss someone living life on their own terms.

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      1. Yes, apparently monkey business has been around a long time. They haven’t changed, it’s just each human generation has to realize on their own that human business is a lot like monkey business.

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          1. I certainly apologize, Hetty, if my musing on current events brings you any trauma. Let’s move on to more pleasant visions. If you were to win the 999 million dollar lottery, what would you do with this clear sign your life had changed?

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            1. Current events have already brought the trauma unfortunately. If I won lotto? 🤔. Pay off all my and my family’s debts, buy a nice little house in the countryside, and fund a home for the mentally ill who are incapable of living on their own, so I could make sure they had decent human beings taking care of them. And a school for intellectually disabled children that my fiance (who’s a special ed teacher) could run. And put the rest in the bank.

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              1. That is a very noble plan, Hetty. Current events be damned. I’m crossing all crossable appendages in hopes your plan comes true. I’ll be an inmate in a memory care facility in the not too distant future and my plan was to organize wheel chair races, watermelon seed spitting contests (contestants are disqualified if their false teeth travel farther than the watermelon seed) and ice cream eating contests. But the one thing about being an inmate in a memory care facility is the necessity to remember one’s grand plans. We should not go to these institutions to await death and endure neglect or abuse, but spend our last days in peaceful repose until that dark shadowed Angel comes to take us home. I’m going to work on that.

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                1. The teeth thing made me laugh out loud. Apparently a memory care facility is a real thing? I know you’re always a tongue-in-cheek sort of guy so I looked it up. I think memory loss has got to be one of the scariest most depressing things.

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                  1. It’s true, I approach all things with humor. Not everybody finds that funny tho. 😆🙄. I’ve had to deal with memory care for my father and grandfather until they were called back to the mothership. I see no reason why I won’t also lose my mind. The strange thing is people with age related dementia are often totally unaware of their situation and mostly driven by inexplicable impulses which doesn’t fit well into a regimented care routine. I thought I would just make the best of it and try to have a little fun before my turn to go to the Soylent Green factory. I have real false teeth stories. They are kinda noir experiences like the time I sat down on a lost pair of chompers on the Sofa. It was difficult to come to grips with the fact my grandfather had just bit me on the butt and he wasn’t even in the room at the time.

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                    1. I’m a firm believer in finding humor in the darkest situations. The more dire, the funnier the jokes are. It’s a survival mechanism to maintain sanity and not be overcome by despair.

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                    2. I developed my special blend of satirical humor in the military. It definitely is a survival mechanism to maintain the group sanity. Military humor is a bit on the dark gothic vampire side and appropriate for any occasion when fear and loathing is at play. I suppose that could apply to any time and anywhere these days.

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                    4. I actually thought I should try blogging some of my errant apparent experiences. My truth is often more bizarre than fiction so it might be fun. I love your style of blogging. Your sharp wit and humor always comes through. I really need to buckle down and actually post something.

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                    6. Waaa haaa haaa! This is a quotable quote for the century. You got me inspired. My heart rate has risen from 23 beats a minute to 85. Now that I’m positive that I’m actually conscious, it’s time to get going.

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                    10. 🥺. I’m working on an AI love story about a lonely nerd and his silicon girlfriend. It might potentially become a sci-fi classic in the future although I have a feeling it could be bizarre enough to be a comedy.

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                    12. I do hope to do that soon. The short story is actually a character profile story that is part of a larger body of work. I am co-writing

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                    14. Haha ha! Yes, my co writer is getting me to write the nerdy boy role because she knows what a nutcase I am. The genre is Fantasy humor like the Discworld series from Terry Pratchett. Basically, our nerdy boy turns himself into an AI to Marry his one true love, Silicone Sally. When a white Witch and her little blue henchmen approach him to save the world from nefarious vaxxers, things go terribly wrong. The white Witch creates an anti-vax vax and thru a terrible misunderstanding Hans uses a banana to inject the Vaxxers with the anti-vax vax. This requires the patient to be tricked into bending over to tie their shoe whereby the little blue men snatch down the patient’s pants/leggings and the banana injection is applied vigorously. It just goes to hell shortly after. This may be considered an adult humor novel. So, what do you think?

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  11. The hair thing doesn’t bother me so much. I think because relative to the more personal things people could ask about, a new hairstyle is relatively innocuous. But I do get how the sad facial reactions of disappointment when you say (reasonably) that you’re not planning to maintain this look would get old.

    Meeting all these coworkers/colleagues in person for the first time after working remotely, I’ve been getting comments of “you’re a lot shorter than I expected you to be from Zoom” – I think this is not a compliment and I never quite know how to respond. Like, idk, blame my mother, who is also short? I mean, I guess it’s better than hearing “you’re a lot uglier in person” or something, but still.

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    1. The hairstyle thing is just one of a litany of many personal questions people ask me. People ask me truly invasive things and I don’t get it. Just don’t get it. No, I’m not pregnant. No, it’s none of your business where I sleep. The hair thing is depressing because it’s not that I don’t intend to keep it that way, it’s that I don’t have enough six-foot long arms to do it by myself. So I’m not capable of maintaining not being ugly.

      I love how people think commenting on their height expectations is okay. Who even thinks of that stuff?

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        1. Look out, that blogger’s a known creep! All joking aside, I wish I hadn’t wasted so much of my younger life staring in the mirror at so many things that later turned out to be imaginary.

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          1. Best creep I know! 😉 The “staring at the mirror at so many things that later turned out to be imaginary” resonates hard – less for actual physical appearance (although that too – now I know what wrinkles really look like!) and more for non-material things that I chased / thought were lacking.

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  12. “Who are you hoping to meet?”

    Warehouse cave trolls lol.

    HAHA!!! Oh my dear I just finished the post and saw your “cavewoman” comment. Completely independent of my “cave trolls”.

    My own hair is now as long as my middle back. I can reach behind my back and pull it, crazy. Only prob is it’s still in a natural mullet shape which is fucking embarrassing, lol. I keep it tied up in public too, but I’m considering cutting it myself. I have a female friend who hasn’t been to a hairdresser in 5 years. So surely I could manage it too? Your work colleagues are so bloody out of touch lol. They should come to UK where everyone has curly hair and bad teeth— can confirm.

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    1. Curly hair and bad teeth–lol! I thought that was just a mean stereotype. Ah yes the mullet stage of growing out hair, I think it’s inevitable. For a long time I used to inflict haircuts on myself, but I was getting lazy, impatient, and therefore sloppy with the scissors, so I returned to the hairdresser. You should do what makes you happy on your own terms.

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