My bangs.  That’s what you get.  Don’t worry, I didn’t hand Addie a pair of shears and tell her to go at it.  No, I went to an expensive salon – the same one I have gone to for the past four years – and I am not happy.

I walked in with long, flowy, pretty hair.  I was sick of my color (blonde in front and dark in back) and desperately needed a trim (it had been over three months) so I knew I would be walking out with a slightly shorter do.  Everything went smoothly, although I have to commit half a day whenever I want to get a cut and color on the same day.  Color ended up looking nice, kinda dark, but its pretty.  I lost almost two and a half inches off my length (sad) but that was kinda my fault because I hadn’t gotten a trim for so long that the ends of my hair were totally dead.  But my bangs….OH MY BANGS!

I have always had problems with people messing with my bangs. I have naturally very curly hair and my bangs seem to have a mind of their own.  So I was V-E-R-Y specific with my requests for cleaning up the front of my hair.  When the shears hit my hair I was watching carefully and everything seemed okay, but as the snips continued I could tell that it was an issue making them even and they just kept getting shorter…and shorter.  Looking back I know when I should have said, “that’s enough! they’re looking a little shorter than I wanted, let’s just stop here.” But my stylist has become somewhat of a friend and I was feeling a mixture of trust and trepidation about hurting her feelings.  So I kept my big mouth shut. And now I look like a fifth grader who cut her own bangs.

But here is the meat of the issue for me: we are going to Disneyworld in four days.  For Addison’s 2nd birthday. This will be the biggest photo opportunity for us all year and I am going down in history with this hair.  Gimme a week more and it will probably grow out enough that I won’t start to cry whenever I try to style it…but I have four days. And my hair – the way it was before – made me feel pretty and sexy and young.  Now, I feel like a frumpy MOM.  Not that being a mom is bad, you know that’s not how I feel.  It’s the capitalized MOM, the stereotypical mom who loses her vitality and jois de vivre and starts wearing pleated khaki capris .  If that’s you, I sincerely apologize, but lose the pleated capris.  Before, I felt like my hair made me stand out…now I feel average.

I’m supposed to be confidence mama! How can one bad haircut make me feel so CRAPPY?  Simple.  It doesn’t change how I feel about who I am…I’m just a little shaken about how I look.  We all have our confidence cornerstones when it comes to our appearance: something that even when nothing else is working for us this ONE thing reminds us that we’ve got something great.  Some people have great skin, some have long legs, others have beautiful eyes.  I have my hair.  So when something happens to change my hair dramatically it has a pretty surprising affect on me.  Granted, it is only my appearance and hair grows back, but (insert whiny voice here) I really liked my hair before I went to the salon! So it’s not that it looks so ridiculous that other people are going to look at me and wonder how I got my hair caught in a weed whacker, its that I look at myself and want to see something different.

I’m trying.  Instead of flipping out about something that I can’t change, I’m trying to remind myself that it is not that important.  Maybe it will force me to try some new styles after having the same style for so long.  Maybe there is a hidden reason in this situation somewhere…

The moral of the story is that even something as frivolous as hair can shake us off our confidence center.  Mine did.  It’s not going to change my life, but acknowledging that my hair means something to me – rather than scolding myself for being so vain – lets me accept a bad haircut for what it is.  Upsetting, but temporary.

The other moral of the story?  I’m never letting anyone touch my bangs EVER AGAIN.