Not liking the fashionable

I can't recall ever getting a certain style because it was fashionable. I do remember once using that as an excuse, though; a stylist was trying to get me to grow my hair, but I didn't want to, so I told her I'd heard short hair was coming back into fashion. *shrugs* I dunno if it really was or not, but I got what I wanted, so I was happy.
Oh, and styles that are fashionable but you don't like them at the time, well, I always thought Jennifer Aniston's hair was ugly. . . and those really long, straight, middle-parted styles people have been wearing a lot the past few years? I despise those more than almost anything else :-P . But as a child in the '80s, I have to admit I really admired all the girls in my school with bobs. Even though I utterly hate bobs now (so boring! and they're just long enough to get in the way, but not long enough to pony, so they annoy me :-P ) I really liked them at the time.

During the early 80s in London, the punk styles were being overtaken by the new romantic look. New romantics had fluffy, curly big hair for the girls (and various versions of the mullet for boys).
I was at art college at the time and all these fresh influences washed over me like a tide.
Although most of my fellow students conformed to the new fashion by having perms etc, I was not at all enarmoured of the trends.
Furthermore, I have thick, black, straight hair and was not interested in adopting a look or style that (a) I didn’t identify with and (b) if I had liked it would mean using harsh chemicals and constant effort to maintain. Something I did not care to do.

About 4 years ago, I went to a hairdresser and asked him to cut my hair. It was just touching my earlobes and I wasn't used to having hair that long!!
The hairdresser was Mr Trendy and although I knew that, I was in a hurry and too tired to care about what he did to my hair as long as it meant I didn’t have to think about it or care for it – something short and easy to maintain was what I asked for.
Well – he went crazy with his scissors.
He was moving his arms around a lot and working his hands through my head quite roughly. I thought it was unnecessarily dramatic at the time but gave him leeway because he obviously considered himself an “artiste”. His cutting seemed very random, but I just waited to see the result.
And what were the results? Awful. I went home and for the first time in many years considered my image in the mirror.
Yes – I was now fashionably styled. But the hair on my head was disassociated from the person it was attached to.
I could not relate to the “messages” that hairstyle was sending.
I felt paralysed for a couple of hours, not knowing whether to go back and ask for another cut or to go to another hairdresser. I was now more tired then when I had stepped into the salon and upset as well. So I picked up my kitchen scissors and butchered the cut. I cut my hair very, very short to remove all trace of that style.
Then I washed it a few times very vigourously to eliminate the smell of the wax that he had put into it.

I can’t describe to you how I felt both relieved and horrified at the end of that day.

Conclusion: Fashion is someone or some groups’ idea of what is temporarily tasteful. These people and their ideas (whatever the artistic and commercial motive) are nothjing to do with me. The are external and incongruent to who I am. I am not interested in anything they do and say and they have no influence upon me whatsoever.

enfys wrote: I haven't gone for one of those silly flicky out bob things like Dido etc. made popular. One look at Judy Finnigan is enough of a deterent for any sane person, IMO.

Hi enfys,

You reminded me of a recent near-encounter. I was sitting in the lobby of a building one weekday waiting for a lunch buddy. In walked a woman, attractive in all regards except for the style you describe (only worse -- very short and flipped up in back to look like a reverse duck bill). I thought to myself, "what on earth possessed her to want to wear her hair like that?" I contemplated asking her, "excuse me, where did you have your hair done?" and then calling the BBB right then and there, "yes, I'd like to issue a complaint against the xyz salon..." But I wisely chose not to do so. Instead, I unwisely decided to share this here!

1) times in the past when some hairstyle
was fashionable but you decided AT THE
TIME that you didn't like it.

Back in the early 90's, I used to have my hair layered around 3 inches all over, collar length at the back, to my ear lobes at the sides and eyebrow length at the front. The fashion then evolved to having the ear line slowly going to half-way up the ear, then 3/4's up the ear and then finally to a diagonal line that just covered the ear. On several occasions I'd ask for a trim, and the stylist would give me one of these styles, until I cottoned on to what was happening and specified the actual length I wanted the sides.

(I still have my hair cut collar length/eyebrow length/earlobe length) despite the attempts of the UK hair industry :)

I've never worn a hairstyle I didn't like.
When I was a teenager I wore long staraight hair, and it looked good then and it would look good now.
Then I got a bob cut. The same thing, it looked good then and it would look good now.
And now that I'm 27 going on 28 years old, I wear an attractive short pixie. It would look good in any era.

I have never worn corny or terrible looking hairstyles like mullets or puffed up big hair or any of that. They looked stupid then and they look stupid now, those kinds of hairstyles never look good.

A good hairstyle is like good music. The great classical symphonies, jazz, and classic rock music, the best of those styles of music, still sound good today. The best music of the present will sound good ten or twenty years from now.
The same with hairstyles. There are some very classy hairstyles from the 1920s, 1930s,1940s, 1950s, etc. that still look good. Some hairstyles from that era look less good. Same with clothes.

If you have good taste in music, fashion, or clothes, all of that stuff, the best of it, is good in any era. The bad stuff isn't.

kool :)