We’re back baby! Man, that covid really knocked me on my beautiful ass. Have you had it recently? I’m hoping the answer is a big fat no!! After I was actually in the sickness I enjoyed a period of Frail Victorian Childhood, where activities like walking to the mailbox, er, carrier pigeon…post? left me a little winded. Now I’m more of a Victorian Teenager who maybe had the mumps as a baby- I am pretty much back to normal, but if I pull too hard on a stubborn weed in the garden I do have to take to my chaise. Hopefully I’ll be a full blown modern woman again soon!
Right before we left for New York, I sort of accidentally got a pretty short haircut. It’s just a “sort of” because I think I did consent to the chop, but in the way that everything seems like fun and games when you’re talking hypotheticals with your charismatic hair surgeon, but when you’re finally alone in your car looking at yourself in the rearview mirror you’re like oh is this…bad? But it’s not! It’s NOT. It’s just new! And my historical impulse to make my hair as floofy as possible can sometimes make this little french bob look like a 90’s boy who is also a much older woman, so I’m needing to adopt some new styling tricks into my arsenal, see: watching hair tutorials on tiktok and furiously taking notes on anything Jayne Matthews recommends (I ordered a bunch of hair products she swears by and will report back!).
I’ve been very lucky to have hair that generally flops the way I’d like it to with absolutely minimal effort- I love a night bath so I’m typically working with slept-on, air-dried hair, and I somehow still don’t have a great grasp on heat tools even though my friends are like, we have truly shown you so many times, so my styling is often limited to dry shampoo, any texturizing spray, a tousle and a prayer. But as I get older and as my bob gets more specific, it is now my mid-year resolution to become a more confident self stylist, especially as it becomes clear that the bob is here to stay.
The first two times I had a short haircut, I was tricked into the whole affair. When I was maybe 7 or 8 my extended family decided to celebrate Thanksgiving in Florida that year, and my mom convinced me that my waist-long hair would be “too hot” in the November Miami sun. Looking back, she was clearly just tired of pinning me down to wrestle knots out of my long hair and was looking for a change in her own routine, but at the time it felt like she was giving me survival tips that I would not make it through our week-long vacation without; I was gullible, naive, and had no idea what “Florida” was, so it was better safe than sorry and a chin-length bob for moi.
The second time I got chopt I was a senior in high school and the theater club was doing a gender-swapped rendition of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, of course. Our strict and mean director’s strict and mean husband was in charge of hair and makeup, and he told me that my long hair wouldn’t fit into the wig cap necessary for my transformation into a doddering old man, so a shoulder-length bob would be the only path forward for a dedicated artiste such as I. A few months later he did all of the theater girls’ hair and makeup for prom and, declaring that my hair was too short to achieve the big, low bun I was after, adorned me with a full nest of fake, oddly blonde-ish hair and sent me on my way. He also painted my face a shade so tan and orange that my mom had to wipe off layers and layers before finishing off my makeup look herself, but that’s a story for another day.
The third, and likely for good, time that I’ve returned to the bob was the first time it was by choice. At the time I didn’t know that a Breakup Haircut was a thing, but a few months after my first big heartbreak I was inexplicably overwhelmed by the urge to make a Big Change, and unwittingly entered the global community of Heartbreak Ritual Observers. It was an effort to take control of my life and step into a version of myself that my ex had never known. A new version. A hot version. A version that would someday make me look like a little French guy, or a mom without the kids, or a little 90’s lad depending on how athletically I slept. And maybe, someday, I could even take it back to Florida. Or, knowing what it is, avoid it entirely.
And that’s the power of a bob.
Have a wonderful weekend my buds! This weekend our friends are hosting a Home Movie Festival, and all participants are submitting up to 5 minutes of home video-adjacent footage that will be projected on The Big Screen. I am so excited- I LOOOOOOOOVE seeing pictures and videos of my friends as kids. It’s so sweet to feel like you can reach back through time and tell that little person that you love them! I initiated a HUMONGOUS collaborative playlist of songs from our childhood days and frankly am obsessed. You can listen below if you’re hungry for a HEARTY dose of 90’s/early 00’s nostalgia!
See you next week!
xx Olivia