{"id":263,"date":"2018-10-12T11:39:12","date_gmt":"2018-10-12T16:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/annbarry.com\/?p=263"},"modified":"2018-10-13T17:04:44","modified_gmt":"2018-10-13T22:04:44","slug":"its-a-good-hair-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/annbarry.com\/wp\/its-a-good-hair-day\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s a Good Hair Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Hair.<\/strong> It’s one of those crazy subjects like cars that everyone relates to.\u00a0 Bad hair days. \u00a0Thank goodness for the parents who think it’s so cute when their child has a cowlick. Not my reaction to myself walking around all day with my hair whipped up by the wind, the finger-in-the socket effect and no one said anything.<\/p>\n

Are there different standards for men and women?<\/em> We seemed to think that boys and men should have short hair, to be considered to have a promising future, but with the new generation of entrepreneurs, all rules are off.<\/p>\n

Image<\/strong> for girls and women on the other hand seem to have intensified.\u00a0 It’s hair yes, and anti-wrinkle cream, and ideal weight, and being able to dance, sing, and play the piano (I’m all for that, of course).\u00a0 Having the coolest bag and shoes and jeans and jacket occupies minds and conversation. \u00a0The popular girls set the norms. I wonder if popular means they base their looks after celebrities. Externals become the measurement of who we are if we let it. Hair is sometimes that first impression<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The way you wear your hair can be helpful.<\/em> If you’re into athletics, sports, fitness, even piano recitals having hair that you can pull back out of your face. \u00a0My Granddaughter’s dance troop called the Starcatz are so professional.\u00a0 They all have ponytails, heavy makeup, and have to pass intensive tryouts to show the skills. They meet before school twice a week and have a system of merits and demerits. The whole family showed up yesterday to the 8th grade volleyball game to watch two dance routines done in between the games.\u00a0 At first it was hard to see which dancer was my Granddaughter.\u00a0 They all tend to look alike, but her petite size helped me find her and do a short video. \u00a0I think Jade liked having her moment of attention and it was fun to hang out with family, too.<\/p>\n

Having long hair was my trademark. With short hair, more than once, people would stop me in the street and ask if I was Ann Barry<\/em>.\u00a0 For me long hair was just easier to take care. Utilitarian. Although I never looked good in a ponytail.<\/p>\n

When I decided to cut my hair, it was like a cutting-off-my-arm decision<\/strong>.\u00a0 I needed a plan, a goal and luckily my friend and hair stylist, Kay, walked alongside me offering suggestions and commiserating and allowing a trial and error time until I could be okay with shorter hair.\u00a0 At one time, my son Marc, tried to use persuasion.\u00a0 “You know, Mom, if you cut your hair, you’d look younger.” But it was because I was spending so much money and putting Kay through so much to color over the grey that I decided to go shorter.<\/p>\n

The biggest motivator was for my Granddaughter, Midori, who has alopecia and I had enough length to save it for a future wig if she wanted it.<\/em> \u00a0Both Kay and I nearly had a heart attack as she put the shears to give me my first spike cut. I did that for several years, luckily my hair grows faster than most and I could do an annual cut until the quality of my hair had shown a problem from the over processing with dyes. We graduated to more natural dyes but the gray had become too stubborn and my hair was straw-like. \u00a0\u00a0I decided Midori’s future possible wig had enough hair and I was going to stay short and go white.<\/strong>\u00a0 Kay knew how to do that but I simply can’t accept it yet and she introduced low lights back in.<\/p>\n

During all this I asked Kay to help me with a color accent<\/strong><\/span>.\u00a0 We change it off about every 4 months and she knows how to blend colors to get the best result.<\/p>\n

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It helps that she is an actual artist, oils, chalk, sketches and makes purses, scarves, blouses, and tapestries from her art through VIDA.\u00a0 Mainly guys say, “And why do you do that?”\u00a0 Mainly young girls say, “I love your color.”\u00a0 Each of my grandkids, grandsons included have experimented with kool-aid type of hair color. I’ve done it for almost 8 years so we don’t really talk about it, but I like it and that’s really what counts.<\/p>\n

Bad hair days alluding to when things don’t go as planned, I admire Midori, for so taking on the world and for her acceptance of alopecia. She just asked \u00a0for dance lessons.\u00a0 I know that things are expensive, but the dance rates and policies are what is expected today and my piano studio income doesn’t compare.\u00a0 I hope to help her wish come true.\u00a0 She has a birthday next month.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

This is a good hair day.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hair. It’s one of those crazy subjects like cars that everyone relates to.\u00a0 Bad hair days. \u00a0Thank goodness for the parents who think it’s so cute when their child has a cowlick. Not my reaction to myself walking around all … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[13,15,12,11,16,14,10,17],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/annbarry.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/annbarry.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/annbarry.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annbarry.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annbarry.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/annbarry.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":287,"href":"https:\/\/annbarry.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions\/287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/annbarry.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annbarry.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annbarry.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}