hair - not the musical

A while ago someone posted a question in the comments about hair styles on plus sizes. I think this is a really interesting question, and one I feel is paid way too little attention.

Not that I'm saying I have any answers here, just that I continue to view my own hair do in the particular light of my size.

Here's a selection of hair styles on me. The first dates back to 1985 (I can hear you laughing), and the last is a party wig, but everything in between slots between 2002 and now, in chronological order.
There are two types of hair in which I feel happiest, and they are oddly diametrically opposed. For most of my adult life I have had very short hair, for a lot of it almost crew cut short. I like it because it is easy and practical and a bit edgy. It makes my hair look thicker and stronger. I hate that I need to get it cut all the time, that a bad cut leaves you with nowhere to hide, and that it can amplify my (supposed) assertive and intimidating personality.

Equally I love my hair longer and fuller. The best I ever had was when it was spiral permed at the end of the 80s. I know, perms just kill your hair and grow out awfully, but those months where I had fullness without 'big' hair were a total joy. Somehow the fullness makes me feel more balanced, like the extra size on my head somehow works better with the extra size on my body, and more feminine to boot (whatever that means). But too often my thin limp hair goes, well, thin and limp, and then it looks awful. And you need product and clips and bands and brushes and you have to pull hair out of the drain all the time.

So for me it works something like this. I wear my hair short for years and then for some unpredicted reason (like losing my hairdresser or being overseas or not having time) I decide to grow it. And for a while I enjoy having the hair thing for playing, the hair styles and plaits and knots, each new cut and it's variations on where the layers fall and how the volume sits, short fringe, thin fringe, no fringe. And people say, oh, actually long hair really suits you! So I keep it.

And then one day I wake up and look at myself in the mirror and think, what was I thinking?! Who is that vain, trussed up person in the mirror? And I rush out and get it all cut off. And people say, wow, that's funky! that really suits you!

So I don't know. In this particular incarnation of the cycle I halted at the usual cut off point and just had my hair taken back to the shoulders. That was a few months ago and really, it is time I got it cut again, those top layers are long and limp. Looking back at this collection of photos I like none so much as the really long and the really short.

So maybe it is time I went short again?