Fashion and Aging

Forest Nymph

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Joined
Nov 18, 2017
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Age
41
Location
Northern California
Lifestyle
  1. Vegan
I'm not sure if anyone here even cares, but I've planned my aging very carefully. Some women are dedicated to girlishly thin, but the thing that always pre-occupied me was HAIR. I noticed as a child of the late 20th century is that a lot of my elders chopped their hair off. Even my mom, at the tender age of 30 whatever, cutting her hair Roxette short and dying it blonde. I always had the impression that my grandma and mother's generations were trying to look old faster. I didn't understand why they were cutting their hair.

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When I was a little girl, my sisters weren't allowed to cut our hair, a style choice my mother brought to the 80s from her 70s childhood. When we were little kids, my sisters and I all had super long ratty hair and we wore feathers and clips and leather straps, beads, we looked like Crystal Gayle and those girls in the re-make of Supiria. My mother made no excuses about us having purple cowgirl boots and hot pink feathers in our waist length hair. The young woman in the Cure's "Charlotte Sometimes: video sums up my mother's adolescence for me. She's always been my spirit animal. That woman, whomever she is, not my mom.

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In my teens I had Jennifer Anniston hair, like a lot of girls my age, I kept it about shoulder length, always looking layered and "perfect."

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I remember being complimented by a cohort in my senior class of my high school graduating year on my "perfect hairstylist" hair.

But as I got older, especially past 30, I looked a lot like my mother's childhood:

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And even when I get old, I want to look like the lead singer of Concrete Blonde:
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Or, maybe later on, Anne Rice:

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I mean here's a PERFECT photo of Johnette Napolitano in 1992. Peak goth girl. I see this being my hairstyle from 45-65. With natural alterations to potential Anne Rice grays previously mentioned above, of course.

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Was there ever a girl who looked forward to growing up to being the Concrete Blonde/Anne Rice lady. This has always been my idealized picture of middle age to counter all of the Paula Deen I was seeing in my life. I have always LOOKED FORWARD TO BEING MIDDLE AGED. Like I was going to be mysteriously attractive if not conventionally "sexy" and really smart and doing something awesome in the world. Like Johnette or Anne.

I think this is what my grandma or mom was looking at in 1980 or 2000. They were looking at those weird ladies in the 40s and 50s with short hair. They said they were going to be awesome middle aged ladies with short hair. I just don't understand why anyone would ever want to be ugly on purpose.
 
I've had the same length hair since I was a teenager, apart from when I left university and had it cut into a bob until it grew back. It's always been about just past my shoulders. It never gets really long. I doubt I will ever get it cut short.

I found my first grey hair last week, in fact. I'm going to be 45 next year. I've had it my natural colour since 2006 and I think I will colour it if I go more grey. I don't think it would suit me, although some people look fine with grey or white hair.
 
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Wait I know why my mother and grandma's generation wanted to cut their hair and be "ugly" they were so entrapped by sexuality and pantyhose (my mother once went on this long rant about pantyhose, and being an 80s baby, it still made sense to me, because I started wearing pantyhose at SEVEN and identified it strongly with my femininity until at least my early 20s) ...imagine you were ONLY sexy, I was ONLY sexy once, But I didn't have to stay there. I was allowed to play with all these different versions of myself and be one or the other or both. I knew what it was like to be mostly be only sexy until I was like 25, I think my partner accepted me as gorgeous as a nightmare hippie tomboy by 25-26. Up til that point I was "conventionally pretty" in every sense. Including being abused and abusive. I never heard much about my "boyishness" after 13 or before 26. My ma and my grandma had no choice, This was their life until they were 35, 50, or 60.

When I was 35 I was more empowered in every way than either one could have ever imagined being without a man present.

No wonder they wanted to "cut off" their femininity. It's a privilege to keep my femininity, at least in my own family and social class, The women I looked up to were feminists in my childhood, but they weren't from my family, I have no idea what my girls actually suffered. I see this a lot even now, even as an "old lady" I see how privileged some girls are younger than me, a lot of people from money or "good families." My mom and grandma didn't have that choice, My mothers act of cutting her hair, dying it blonde, and even being flexitarian was VERY BRAVE, I need to love my mother with all I've got. For who she was, she's everything she could be, I love her for it.
 
I love that gray hair is “in style” and letting my gray grow in is the best decision I ever made. It definitely ages you unless you have really good genes and have good skin and few wrinkles. So I do pay the price of looking my 68 years. It would be helpful if I didn’t have such bad curly/frizzy hair. IMO hair is everything and really makes the person (physically speaking). I’m not going to go on another tirade about my hair and what a horrible summer I had, lol, not being able to get to a salon for regular trimming and a keratin treatment. I’ll find some pictures of what I consider perfect hair would be for me as I age.
 
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I used to have long hair and think I'll grow it again. My wife had her hair longish and tied it back and I thought she looked sweet, then cut it short coz she kept finding long grey hairs on the floor, maybe she thought short wouldn't be so noticeable, I don't know. I cut mine so could get a job easier then coz of the type of work kept it buzzed.

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That is so very subjective! When I was a kid i was made to get my hair cut, early 70's. I had long hair through high school, cut it in a Joan Jett cut on/ off until my late 40's when I gave up and just kept cutting it. My hair has a very frizzy top layer. It's super nice when all defrizzed with serums or braids, or tying it up. I used to do a french braid for the day then by evening it would be nice and wavy, still damp from the morning shower!
Having it short in my fifties has nothing to do with how I look, just really practical. I would like to color it though, the lights in the bathroom at work make it look salt and pepper, not a good look for me!
As for clothes, I need to lose weight. That's all