Bad Haircut Hall of Fame

If you follow our blog, you will know that of the five children in our family, four are redheads. I am the lone brunette with poker straight hair in contrast to my sisters’ naturally curly locks. So perhaps I could be excused for having just a teensy weensy obsession with hair. With that in mind, when I was looking for pictures to use in our blog I did notice some questionable hair themes which I feel I must address.

Betty Set the Tone

In her younger years mom had beautiful brunette hair. But, she went prematurely grey and so I don’t really remember her with anything but grey and eventually snowy white hair.

Mom was of the generation of women who attended the hairdresser for a weekly “wash and set.” This meant having your hair washed, sitting under a hairdryer with rollers in your hair and then having it “teased” and hair sprayed so that it would stay put until the next appointment. Mom continued this routine right up until her passing.

Baby Fine

Really, babies can get away with just about any hairdo. Big and Little Sis having natural curl, just had to have their hair brushed (and a bow put in for special occasions) for it to look cute.

Mom was determined that I too would have curls which was a monumental challenge with my fine straight hair. The process involved mom putting my hair in pincurls before bed and then my trying to sleep with bobby pins poking my scalp every which way, and in the morning praying that the curls would be there. Little Sis says she too had pincurls once and says mom told her to hold her head over the heat register to dry them as we didn’t have a hairdryer. I guess necessity is the mother of invention.

Fringe on Top

One of the most striking things I noticed in pictures from our younger days was that we all had a fringe (or bangs as we used to say) at some point. Not remarkable in itself, but when you combine the shortness of the fringe with our family propensity for having rather large foreheads, it makes for some really interesting hairdos. And how about those glasses?

The Long and Short of It

As most women are wont to do, the length of our hair varied over time. Here we are when each of us was in a long hair phase.

I guess I thought that long hair and no smile made me look like a serious high school grad. And you can see in Big Sis’ picture her smooth hair is surprisingly straight with a flip up on the ends. How this smooth straight hair came to be was quite a process. It involved Big Sis using large juice cans as hair rollers and once her hair dried, ironing it to get that super smooth look. Now that is dedication and ingenuity in action! Watching this process was the one time in my life I was glad I had straight hair. Little Sis on the other hand, preferred to go au naturel and leave her long hair curly. What I wouldn’t give for natural curls like that.

Poof!

Another phase we all seem to have gone through is poufy hairdos. For me the pouf was always about trying to get those chubby cheeks of mine appearing a little more svelte. I guess I also thought wearing giant glasses would help with this.

For Big Sis, I suspect that the poufiness was a way to make her appear taller than her 5 foot stature. Her poufy hairdo is also memorable because it is the only time in the last several decades that I recall her having a different hairdo from the one she has today.

The only time I can recall Little Sis feeling the need for poufiness was the day she got married. Ever the low maintenance sister, her usual hair routine is pretty simple – wash, brush and go.

Grey Matter

Now that we sisters are all well past middle age, practicality has overtaken all else with our hair. I have accepted that no amount of curling, cutting or product is going to change the fact that my hair is straight and so I just go with that. However, my hairdresser has told me that I seem to have an unnatural obsession with making sure my fringe is not too short….

As for Big Sis, she figured out well before the rest of us that sticking with a hairdo that works makes life a lot easier and, when you can get out of bed in the morning with nary a hair out of place, as she is able to do, why would you want to change things?

Little Sis, in her ongoing pursuit of a low maintenance lifestyle, sought advice from Big Sis about her haircut, and in short order found herself at the hair salon with Big Sis giving directions to the hairdresser as to how to do the cut. This was so successful, Little Sis thought perhaps some fashion advice from Big Sis might yield similar results and the rest is history – my sisters have turned into the Bobbsey twins right down to the glasses and poppies on their vests.

Not wanting to feel left out, I tried to make it the Bobbsey triplets, but it didn’t quite work…. Oh well, there are benefits to standing out in a crowd.

And the Nominees Are…

As the title of this post indicates we are talking Hall of Fame haircuts. But truth be told, there are just too many potential nominees. Aside from the examples above, below are several more contenders. We leave it to you to decide…