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It seems no one likes their hair. My hair has always been thick and coarse. As a child my hair was very straight so curls stayed in for only a short time. Once I reached puberty my hair changed from being straight and laying flat to being frizzy, poofy & wavy. Then as my gray hair began arriving the wavy turned to almost curly. Most of my life I have fought with forcing my hair into a style that fit the more fashionable styles of the time.
Among the photos in my album are ones of me crying because Mom had my hair fixed in a style she thought was cute but I hated (I’ve chosen to not share those photos of me crying, I’m sure you can imagine why). Many Saturday evenings were spent sitting on the floor at my Mom’s feet while she put curlers in my hair. Sometimes I used the portable bonnet style dryer, which always put me to sleep due to the warmth and noise.
Just like ours, ca 1957. The vent on the front was for drying your nails.
Included here is an image of the exact style and color of the one we had. Update August 2013: Among my grandparents’ slides, I discovered a photo of me using our hair dryer in 1966.
Sometimes I slept in the rollers, which was very uncomfortable since the rollers had brush like bristles on the outside of them and were kept in place with roller pins. Later, I was thrilled with the heated curlers. I still have one of the first sets I got.
Eventually, we started using a handheld hair dryer. The only trouble with that type of dryer is that my hair is full and bushy with no assistance. Blow drying my hair makes it very bushy.
On my 16th birthday I got my first curling iron. It was expandable so that I could vary the size of the curler. It took me years to get the hang of using curling iron.
By my mid twenties I started getting my hair permed and then used the curling iron to control the frizz a bit more. As my gray hair began showing up, my hair started becoming curlier and wilder so I started hiding the gray by having my hair colored and let my hair dry naturally with minor touch ups with the curling iron. For the past year I’ve been getting a Keratin treatment on my hair that tames the frizzy hair and keeps it straight. It, too, is basically a wash and go hair style. However, since it takes my hair 3-4 hours to dry, I have to wash it at night to allow plenty of time to dry.
My Dad’s hair is thick, wavy and very coarse but my Mom’s isn’t. My brother’s hair is thick, coarse and pretty curly as is my son’s. My daughter’s hair is thick, coarse and straight.
I’m including a whole bunch of photos with commentary to note the variations in my hair (and me) from the age of 3 until now. It’s a lot so my apologies to most readers but it was an exercise for my descendants.
Click to enlarge, then click to zoom
Relative Storyboards 