Firestarter

Not really, I just gotz mah hair did

If you haven't figured out I like to use song lyrics and titles as my blog post titles. I think my current favorite song with fire in the title is by Kings of Leon (Sex on Fire) but seeing as I usually post this from my fb and I have tons of family on my page, I didn't want the judgement for a social quip about sex when I just wanted to brag on my hair. You get a Prodigy reference instead and it is a pretty damn good workout song as well.

When Gatherer was a college aged, she made poor money choices. She paid to get her hair and nails done on the regular. I kept it up until my late 20's when I met Hunter. Hunter sat me down and had a little heart-to-heart with me to remind me that I didn't exactly come from a big 'ol bank roll, so I stopped getting things like my hair and nails done for a very long time. I would have the occasional splurge and get a super duper fancy hair do or get my nails done but would always stop under the crippling guilt of spending money on me instead of the natives, Hunter, or the future like a good responsible wife and mother should be doing. I would look at all the other women who obviously spent more money than me on their appearance and feel embarrassed at how I looked but would tell myself that it didn't matter and that no one noticed but me. For a few years I've been using box dye or coloring conditioner. My haircuts were primarily through great clips and up until 3 years ago I really just used whatever Hunter brought home as the cheapest body wash, shampoo, and conditioner. The first step toward reclaiming my inner feminine side was nails and shampoo/conditioner. I remember going on a girls trip and not wanting to smell like dude shampoo and wanting to feel like a woman and not some hideous momblob that had just given up on herself. So I bought fancy body wash, fancy shampoo and conditioner, and paid to have my nails done. The guilt was so overwhelming but but it also felt like I could see a little bit of myself again.

Y'all I am vain. Vain as hell. I was not a cute child (Aunt Mary, if you are reading this don't lie to these people, you have to say I was cute, I know better, there are pictures woman). I was so jealous of the pretty girls in school. I wasn't particularly good at anything that would have made me attractive or beautiful. I just wanted to be liked and be pretty. I used to claim I hated the cheerleaders but it was so much more that I hated how I felt next to them. Awkward, plain, simple, unattractive, and unwanted. So spending the past decade of my life turning into the caricature of what everyone thinks of as a worn out soccer mom didn't help my self image or self esteem. Little by little I've tried to crawl out of this rut and I think I'm getting somewhere. Part of that has been shoving back the guilt of spending money on my appearance, because it really really does matter to me. It shouldn't, but it does. So for the first time in a long time, I dove in and made an appointment to fix my rachetass hair that I had jacked up with box dye. Don't get me wrong, I love the color that box was giving me, but it lacked the depth and variation I wanted. And also so bad for my hair, it faded so fast I was having to redo it almost once a month (that is a ton of chemicals y'all).

Caitlin at Seven Hills Studio was great, she listened to me, she understood what I was asking for (I don't speak in complete sentence and tend to talk with my hands when I can't find the right word) and when I went in to have her do my color and shape-up my tragic "I'm turning 40 and let great clips chop off a few years of growth because I was having a midlife crisis and now I cry when I do my hair" hairstyle. Enjoy the before and after below. Y'all those roots had me looking sooooo grey!

There are parts of me I'll never share with y'all, and I think that is okay. I want it to be okay to be weird and abnormal I want to be accepted for me. Red hair, fancy nails, muscular, nerdy, quirky, irrational, emotional, unashamedly me. And today I feel pretty so I'm calling it a good day even if the world has trouble accepting that me.