Follicles
What is it with girls and hair? I am the mother of two girls. They are both beautiful and funny and charming and full of life. Sarcasm Girl has a head full of long, thick, chestnut colored hair with a wave--the sort of hair from which those astonishing 40s noir do's were fashioned (she does have a lot of broken hair, as she will tear her hairbrush through it as though trying to scare it into submission). Does she like her hair? She does not. She hates the wave, considers her hair to be bushy (it is not, I promise you, bushy). Whenever she washes her hair she wants me to iron it straight for her. Her hair looks fine straight, but I rather regret the thick lushness of her hair in its native state.
And then there is Younger Girl. Today, as I was ferrying her to her Little League practice she began to fret. "I can't go unless I have a hairbrush. I can't believe what my hair is doing!" (What was it doing? Hangin' off her head is what it was doing. Nothing impressively weird, certainly.) YG has straight, honey-brown hair with natural blonde streaks (where did they come from? Not my side of the family!). Her hair is longish, with bangs, and quite pretty. And yet YG briefly threatened to ditch Little League because it looked funky.
Are all girls hair crazy? I don't remember being so myself, but I may simply have despaired of doing anything with my hair--I have a black thumb for plants and for hair.
And then there is Younger Girl. Today, as I was ferrying her to her Little League practice she began to fret. "I can't go unless I have a hairbrush. I can't believe what my hair is doing!" (What was it doing? Hangin' off her head is what it was doing. Nothing impressively weird, certainly.) YG has straight, honey-brown hair with natural blonde streaks (where did they come from? Not my side of the family!). Her hair is longish, with bangs, and quite pretty. And yet YG briefly threatened to ditch Little League because it looked funky.
Are all girls hair crazy? I don't remember being so myself, but I may simply have despaired of doing anything with my hair--I have a black thumb for plants and for hair.
posted by Madeleine Robins at 9:01 PM
2 Comments:
But do you like your own hair? Did you, when you were a kid? I'm just trying to figure out if this psychosis is a product of our time and place, or just knit into the DNA of girls.
Hi - hope you don't mind a comment from a woman of traditional build and a certain age, but I'm an online friend of Sharyn's, and one of your comments looked interesting (and I wanted to know how you managed to find less of you... well done!).
I have a 4YO son; occasionally he says things about liking his hair, or not; but I do think it's not a psychosis at all, it's normal developmental behaviour. We are social animals and highly visual ones; girls are socially more aware from a much earlier age than are boys; and are, in general, more finely-tuned animals than boys (and I'm not knocking boys, either; mine is smashing). Also, at 11 or thereabouts hormones start kicking in which change the texture and quantity of hair; mine was very smmoth when I was a child and started getting wavier, thicker, and slightly coarser when I was about 12. Your daughters may be taking note of a lot of subtle changes and focussing on their hair as one controllable way of dealing with some of those changes.
I'll get my coat, now, having barged in on your life a bit; but you sound like you're doing a super job. Wrll done, you.
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