Hairstyles: the Tried and True

I seem to average about 6 months between each haircut visit. I think part of it is because, until a year ago, I've never been able to really find a stylist that truly understands my hair needs. My rants about my failed attempts at finding a good hairstylist filled my blog post on Grab a few years ago: http://blogs.grab.com/hellykwee/105612

But as you can see from my last blog post about a haircut (six months ago), I did eventually find one that I've stuck with ever since: http://heckledtrio.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/new-haircut/

As you can tell from the photos in that blog post, I was well on my way to growing my bangs out. I have had short hair for much of my life, and didn't start growing it out until high school (and even then, my post-high-school years were filled with occasional stints of *really* short hair, which was much easier to maintain in the Army). Throughout all the years, I've always had bangs (aka "fringe" for those of you across the pond). And while I liked them okay, I was always frustrated that I could never do things like wear hats, or get them wet when it's drizzling outside, without ruining them. Naturally I also started wondering what I would look like without bangs. At the very least, it would be less work for me, not having bangs to tame in the morning.

And so my quest began almost exactly 1 year ago-- after our annual 4th of July church campout in 2009, I stopped trimming my bangs. It was hard at first, to resist the temptation to trim them when they got to the stage where they were long enough to fall into my eyes and bother me, yet too short to really push away from my face without immediately falling back again. Fortunately my hair grows relatively fast, and that awkward period soon passed. I discovered that I had to part my hair to the side, or else I'd wind up looking like a 60s hippie. This in turn revealed more gray hairs, which wasn't ideal either.

Nearly a year after growing out my bangs, I realized, after seeing some photos taken of me, that I just couldn't pull off the no-bangs look. I just don't have the right face shape, hairline and hair texture for it. Because my hair is so thick, coarse and straight, I couldn't pull off any sort of hairstyle that entailed pulling my hair back. Which... sucks, as who wants to be limited to having their hair down and loose all the time? This photo illustrates the contrast sharply:

That's me on the left and my friend Tabitha on the right. Notice how although her headband doesn't pull ALL of her hair all the way back, it does push some of it away from her face, and yet the finer texture of her hair allows for nice wisps on the side, softening the often-harsh look of exposing your forehead and sides of your face. Since my hair type is a far cry from that, it's all-or-nothing for me: either it's all pulled smoothly (too smoothly) back or it's all hanging down. No in-between.

So I decided I had to go back to having bangs. I had seen lots of photos (of friends, celebrities and style guides on the web) of people with side-swept bangs, and always thought they looked nice, and served as a nice compromise between my usual blunt-cut bangs and no bangs at all. I thought I would give it a try, and visited my trusty stylist. It was about time for the rest of my hair to be trimmed, anyway-- the growing process is hindered by all those split ends! Here is a photo of me before going in. By this point, I've grown out all of my bangs and attempted to soften the sharpness of a completely blank forehead by brushing some of the hair over it and tucking it behind my ear-- a sort of faux side bangs, if you will:



As soon as the stylist cut my hair, I realized it wasn't going to work. Most people whose photos I've seen and admired had softer, wavy hair-- the type that will stay to the side if you comb it that way (maybe with a bit of styling aid). My hair? Was so coarse and straight that it naturally wanted to fall straight and forward back across my forehead! Which meant that, for the length of bangs needed to make side bangs, this hair was too long, falling in my eyes, and generally bothering me. Here's a shot of what I looked like after my visit to the stylist: if you click on the photo for the larger image, you can already see some wisps of hair falling into my eyes. It would actually be even more if the edge of my glasses weren't keeping that hair at bay! If I had moved my head just slightly, it would've covered my eye. And that's WITH some hair pomade already in it-- can you imagine how much product I'd need to make the hair stay in place? It would end up being just as much work as I used to have with my regular bangs, and I would need so much that it would end up slicking the hair all the way to the side-- in other words, bringing me back to the empty forehead, bang-less look I was trying to mitigate in the first place!



This was on a Friday, and the stylist suggested that I try it out over the weekend. If I didn't like it, I could come in on Monday and she'd fix it at no charge. Well, the weekend came and went, and to keep the dang hair out of my eyes, I kept it pinned back with a bobby pin most of the time at home. This is a shot I took on Saturday, the day after. As you can see, except for the fact that my hair is smoother without split ends, it really doesn't look much different from my first, "before the cut" picture:



So on Monday I trooped back to my stylist and asked her to cut them back into my normal, straight, blunt-cut bangs. Except it wasn't quite back to exactly how I used to have them. Before I grew out my bangs, I didn't have a lot of hair in the bangs to begin with. I never liked the "heavy bang" look and minimized the amount of hair I would put into it. You can't tell from my older photos, but it really is a small amount (it just *looks* heavier because my hair is so thick). I realize now that that was a part of the problem causing my bangs to be unruly-- there wasn't enough there to weigh it down when things like wind or rain came, causing a stringy look.

But because the stylist had to cut further back into my hairline in order to give me "thicker" side bangs (and, in theory, enough hair to make that work), she had no choice but to cut my blunt bangs at the same depth. At first I feared it would be too much, as I've never had bangs that heavy before. But I've come to realize that the added hair and weight actually *helps* keep my bangs tamed. I found more side benefits, too: because I can now go back to parting my hair in the middle, my hair doesn't have the "triangular" effect it did when I had to part them on the side-- i.e. the top had my hair smoothly against my head, only to branch out into poofy, coarse hair at the ends. My hair "fluffiness" looked more even. Better still, since more hair went into my bangs, that meant less hair going into the long lengths = less hair weighing it down = more bounce to it.

So here I am now:



I'm really pleased with how it turned out. It's actually *easier* to maintain these bangs than it was trying to maintain my original blunt bangs throughout all those years. I think part of it is also an improvement in my hair health thanks to the various shampoos and conditioners I've been experimenting with, trying to find one strong enough for my hair... but that's for another blog post.

For now, Helly is back to her original look :-)
And while I'm a bit disappointed to have learned that I'm one of those people who can't pull off a bang-less look, at least I've had a chance to try it, and now I know for sure. Besides, the end result of it was not simply a return to my old look, but an improvement on it-- one that definitely makes my life and my morning routine faster and easier. Hurrah for convenience! :-)