Reaction to wearing hair up

I have had a chin length bob for a while and its smart but doesnt get comments or anything. I have been growing out and its long enough now to have up or pulled back if I want but I had not really bothered. Well last week I was in a hurry to get out so stopped at the drugstore and got a plain straight tortoiseshell barrette (my first accessory!) which I used to wear my hair in a low ponytail. I turned up at the bar to meet my friends and it was like I`d chopped it off or gone purple "Sandys wearing her hair up, you look great, etc etc" I was real surprised at how much people noticed I thought it would be no big deal. Anyway I tried the same style for work next day and same reaction - amazing - and then Friday I wore it full up twisting the ponytail and holding with the barrette, using a couple of pins to keep it neat - this again got lots of positive and interested reaction from both sexes but the ladies mainly. Wore it loose Monday and people were asking when was it going up again? Just real surprised that people notice and are that interested. Any views or experiences of similar things?

thats great that people are reacting positive to you wearing your hair up sandra :) what other styles are you going to try? another good style is to wear it in a half ponytail with the scalp visible and forming a line across the back of your head going from like one ear to the other,i do this style sometimes and it looks good:)

Well whenever I used to wear my hair up my mom liked it. But I mostly just let it down or put the front back with clips or a headband and since now my hair is short I can`t put it up. Doesn`t bug me much...

Hi Sandra,

I`ll bet that you have beautiful facial features! Although I very much love long hair, I have to admit that sometimes it may overwhelm facial features, if it`s worn too much on the face. By putting your hair back, people were able to see your lovely face! That doesn`t mean you always have to wear your hair up, but when you do, you face will always come into focus first.

Consider that a supereme compliment!

Regards,

Jennifer

I always admire Sharon`s hair. It looks very silky.

I`ve been a long-time reader but this is my first post. Your experience has prompted me to weigh in on one guy`s feelings on hair being worn up, and what I especially like and dislike in hairstyles.

At age 42 I`ve ALWAYS been a long hair fan, but there are certain ways in which a woman can wear her hair up that I find extremely attractive. While I don`t care for ponytails held back with an elastic or scrunchie (unless it`s attached to the top or back of the head and puffs out in all directions), but love a straight or wavy ponytail held back high or low by a barrette- especially the large metal ones. If the hair is partially clipped back with some still down the back, it doesn`t interest me.

Back in the seventies, it was common for women with very long, straight hair to twist it around, bend over and attach it to the back of the head with a large clip. When she`d staighten out, the ponytail would bounce and flop over the shoulderns in an absolutely ADORABLE way. (A similar effect can be achieved with claw clips, but it`s best with a metal Goody.) There`s one last-season episode of THE BRADY BUNCH in which Maureen McCormick wears her hair this way in a couple of scenes-the one in which she gets a part-time job at the ice-cream parlor. That`s the only example I can think of to illustrate this. One girlfriend I had in the mid-eighties often wore her hair like this. For lack of a better term, we nicknamed it the `flip-flop`.

This girlfriend (with whom I fell out of touch when I married someone else) also wore a straight ponytail attached with a metal barrette. The most fun I ever had with her (and probably the only reason I stayed with her as long as I did) was when she would let me try to make a `flip-flop`, or brush her hair straight or as a ponytail. If she wore braids, bun or twist (all of which I HATE!) I knew she was mad at me or otherwise out of sorts.

The banana clip also made a very cute ponytail effect on either curly or straight hair. It seemed like the time around 1986-89, EVERY woman had one. But they became less and less common in the nineties.

My wife of nearly ten years has thick, wavy hair which naturally grows into a high `pouf` (which enables me to find her easily in stores with clothing racks), so she can`t let it grow past chin-length because she claims it gets too messy and unmanageable. Under her old (male) hairdresser who skipped town six years ago, she was able to grow it between shoulder and bra-strap length while keeping the `pouf`. At its longest she could make a short pony tail with a jeweled elastic someone gave her for a gift, but I never cared for it.

I did manage to persuade her to bear with another obsession of mine: headbands! Don`t ask me to explain it, but I LOOOVE headbands- not so much elastic ones (although they can look cute if not too wide), but the U-shaped ones- especially the plastic ones with the rows of teeth on the insides, the wider the better. The brown, swirly tortoise-shell (?) ones are the sexiest , IMO. Bands look great to me worn in any position, but I especially love how a woman looks when the band is slid all the way back on the crown so at first it looks like she`s pinned it partially back. In the last half-hour of PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED, Kathleen Turner wears a wide white plastic headband in this way. Until recently, there was a Vita-free infomercial with a female co-host who wore a very wide, flat plastic tortoise-shell like this.

Lisa thought I was nuts at first, but herself came to prefer headbands to her previous accessory, those large combs that were very popular in the late seventies. When she slid it back, the front of her hair would be very smooth and straight (no bangs), but the rest would puff out around her head and, if long enough, down her back as well. Her mother and co-workers thought she looked ugly. I was afraid to say to anyone else how much I liked this look. For some reason, most men and women consider headbands dowdy- look at the grief Hillary got.

Obviously the way ones hairdresser cuts ones hair affects the way it grows, because her current (female) hairdresser adheres to the over-35/post-childbirth-equals-short-hair mentality. Lisa feels pregnancy caused her hair to become very lifeless and susceptible to gray (At age 41, she does have a little gray amongst her reddish blonde, but I would rather have that than her dye it), so when our son was about seven months old, she cut her hair to less than collar-length, which broke my heart.

In the intervening years, she`s kept it mostly short, but it retains its thickness and `poufiness`. For about a year she had a bob haircut which gave her huge `wings` on the side. I enjoyed it, but she got rid of that too. From time to time in hot weather, or when washing her face she`ll still wear her one remaining headband, a wide white plastic Karina. When we moved five years ago, she threw out all her others, figuring she wouldn`t need them- I had bought her quite a few from a vendor at the flea market I worked at. In secret I rescued herwide sky-blue plastic Goody which I keep in my armoire for `nostalgia`. Luckily, I`ve got a number of old photos of her headbanded.

I wouldn`t tell Lisa, who I love more than anything- along with our son- that I`d love her hair longer again, or at least for her to wear the headband more often. Among other reasons, she`s been after me to lose weight, something I find impossible to do. Somehow I feel we`re too old and married too long to be striking `deals`.

Wow, this turned out to be a long post! Thank you for the chance for me to indulge myself- if anybody`s still reading.

To Howard,

Enjoyed your first post. Hope you do many more.