When I was a child, at some point my mother cut my hair. It was short, very short. I’m told she was inspired by Audrey Hepburn’s pixie cut. I was mortified. I remember being mistaken for a boy a few times, enough that an aversion for short hair was implanted that has never gone away.
At this point it had grown out to a bob. I still wasn’t happy.
I couldn’t wait to not only grow it out, but to grow it as long as I could. This lasted through school when I finally got a nice shoulder length style, though I cried for days after getting it cut. I still haven’t been able to give in to suggestions I would “look great” with a really short style I could “really style”!
Now this was HAIR, but shortly after this photograph I decided it was time to stop over compensating and cut my hair to shoulder level.
Other people look wonderful with their short hair they can spike up. My younger daughter happily chose to cut her hair not only short, but to shave part of her head, when she grew up. My own hair issues had me rarely taking my 2 daughters to get a hair cut.
My daughter can really rock short hair.
My own hair dresser has the most wonderful short hair. She looks “sassy” and yet also refined and put together. In fact all the stylists at the hair salon, Mia Capelli in Keene NH, seem to have wonderful short hair styles. I just can’t bring myself to even try one, even though I have been told again and again “It will always grow out!”
My mother, and other women, informed me to enjoy my long hair while I was young. The rule seemed to be after 40, or in same cases 30, you had to have short hair. Your hair changes with age, and “no one looks good with longer hair after 40”.
40 came and went a long time ago. While my hair is not terribly long, it is also not short. I’ll go to shoulder length, but the short pixie of my youth still haunts me. I admire my friends like Natalie that pull off short hair with such ease, she can just blow dry, style and go.
New hair products, and my remarkably talented hair colorist and stylist, Kelly, have kept my hair from looking dry and old.
I also noticed a lot of my friends, over 40, also keeping their hair at least at shoulder length. So sorry mom, the new 40 is 60. Or maybe even 70? Who knows?
Chip Taylor photographed my friends and myself at a wedding. I’m pretty sure we’re all over 40. But we look great and our hair stylists are probably very well paid!
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Categories: Travel
Two Different Girls 
I love having longer hair, and don’t plan on ever cutting it short. I’ve seen people in their 70s be able to rock the long hair, and more power to them. 🙂
Where I live in New England, many older women have beautiful longer hair, they don’t dye or do anything with. However, we also have many men with long hair. At the school my daughters attended the joke was the male teachers had longer hair than the women teachers (they did!) At the school each student would be assigned someone from the retirement home as their “friend”. The elderly, and slightly out of it, residents were confused by the boys with long hair. So the boys were required to wear a baseball cap. If they had a cap on, it meant they were “boys”.