Why, yes, the chemicals do smell icky ...
After that, I didn’t do much with my hair. I’d perm it every once in a while in high school, but c.a.r.e.f.u.l.l.y! But other chemical stuff? That I didn’t do.
Until lawschool, when I decided to use one of those wash out purple colors for a party. Little did I know that on thin, fine hair, they don’t wash out so well. I went to conservative Baylor law the following Monday with bright purple hair … in the days before anyone went to school with bright purple hair.
Thus endeth my coloring experiments … at least until I hit my 40s.
Now, I’m a total convert. I love getting my hair colored. It’s fun; it’s like playing dress-up! And when my soon-to-be-eleven year old daughter asked for color for her birthday, her dad and I agreed.
So now my Catherine is a strawberry blonde! (I forgot to take an after picture … it was dark … but the pic above is her in the foils.)
And, of course, I discovered mani/pedis way late in life, too. My kids, however, have been going for years.
Yep, starting them young … and I have to say I love having girl time with my girls!
Do you have kids? What “grown up” stuff did they do at a younger than traditional age?
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Darcy, 8, loves getting pedicures. It’s something we use as a reward for good grades or behavior goals. And what is funny is the look of exasperation and irritation that the other customers have on their faces when we walk into the nail salon- as if they expect her to start throwing polish bottles against the walls or something.
I know I’m super-biased, but she is a very well-behaved girl (at least in public places.) She’s usually the best behaved customer in the salon.
Re: perms
I’ve always had thick hair, but until age 12 or so it was stick-straight and had no body. I got a perm. I didn’t particularly like the way it looked, so I didn’t get another one. (Tragic bangs, we won’t go there.) I let it grow out. And then six months later, this weird strip of perfectly spiraled curly hair suddenly appeared on the back of my head. It spread slowly until all of my hair became the crazy, curly, nearly sentient mess on top of my head I have today. Let’s just say I identified with Merida in that cartoon, Brave.
I had a hair disaster recently. Couldn’t find my usual brand of sparkling amber color and went with a different brand. LOL hair came out almost black. So then I had an old gold blond kit under the sink. I put that on. It didn’t help much, the new mousy brown sucked. I went to bed dejected. The next morning I got up and decided to give myself highlights with a highlighting kit–an hour later I had neon orange hair. At that point i sent my sister, a hair dresser who lives an hour away from me, my picture asking her what to do. She called me and said. GET IN THE CAR and DRIVE TO MY HOUSE. Well, it took three more corrective dyes and treatments to even get my hair presentable. So LOL even at 52 hair disasters still happen.
I have two girls, so we do plenty of hair, makeup, nails, etc. around here. I have a friend who’s a stylist, though, so I don’t have to pay salon prices to get salon quality. It’s awesome!
When I was very young, I was given many permanents…home and beauty shop. My hair wouldn’t hold the curl. My g-aunt always died her hair from the 50′s on. Her hair looked and felt like straw. After seeing her disasters I decided to never dye mine. My granddaughter is ten and she is very girly. She loves to polish her nails, wear dresses, etc. The only way she will wear blue jeans or shorts is if she can also wear a dress.
That’s sort of like Isabella. Finally—finally!–I convinced her to buy some jeans as it’s going to be cold in NY (well, compared to Texas). But she’s very much a girlie-girl!
We love painting our nails.
Tori has colour stripes in her hair.
At 43 I love my purple hair!
Wanna see a picture!!!!
Just noticed your avatar. LOVE it!
It was our second trip to Stonehenge and there were some Canadians there, eh, you know, eh and it made me think of New Kids in the Hall and I started crushing their head from across the way and thought hey I am gonna crush Stonehenge too. So that is me crushing Stonehenge, lol.
I have a girl. She was such a girly girl until age 8 and then whomp, camouflage pants. She became a major tomboy and told me she wanted to be in the army when she grew up. I think it was the same year that some of her friends started getting into boys and one of her best friends was a boy and she just couldn’t bear to think of boys that way yet.
The army thing went away, but oversized shirts and baggy jeans lasted until about 16, when she reemerged from her comfy cocoon and started wearing more form-fitting clothes, and makeup. So no, she was never really ahead of her time into the grown-up stuff. We skipped that phase. And she plays violin, so no fingernails to speak of and she’s still not into the mani-pedis.
Would love some photographic evidence of that purple hair, Julie LOL! Since I had a boy we didn’t do “girl” stuff, but we did shop a lot. He was always good about trekking through “grown-up” antique shops and always managed to find some stash of little cars or boats. The deal was after we went to the “mom” stores we hit up Game Stop. Worked like a charm. Another thing we started him early with was eating adult foods. I didn’t make special “kid” foods for him–if we were eating scallops or lobster or clams or whatever, that’s what he ate. He loved Osso Bucco long before any of the other kids even knew what it was.