My Hair History: Shaved, Dyed, Curled, Grown!

Here are two Polaroids of me as a 12 year old or something. I have no idea when either or these were taken, but they represent my hair throughout childhood pretty well. I went between these two lengths, usually with a fringe, basically ignoring the fact that I had hair. When I was very little it was very light blonde, but other than that it didn't change much.

2007 - age 16

 Here's me at age 16, in the midst of a phase of wearing alice bands. Bright green ones. I loved bright green at this age. Maybe just because I matched Pringles tubes.

October 2009 - age 18

In college aged 18, I decided to have a "life experience" and shaved my head. This is the only picture I have of that time, because I hated it. I'm dressed up as The Riddler at Thorpe Park. It was Halloween. I left a tuft of hair at the top, bleached it, and dyed it bright orange for my costume. I had hated my hair for a long time and really wanted to see how shaving my head would affect me. It was very emotionally challenging, I realised that some of my friends were not really my friends, and I felt like I was constantly being stared at (mostly because I was). And I had to grow out my bleached tuft of hair, too. I hated it, but it was a huge first step on a journey to start feeling happy about my hair. If I were to shave my head now I'm sure I would be a lot more okay with it. It was a really worthwhile experience to me, even though it was very difficult.

July 2010 - age 19

You can't see too well here, but this is one of very few pictures I have of my hair growing back out. I was happy to have some hair again, but I still felt ugly with hair this short.

February 2012 - age 21

Fast forward to 2012 and I was maintaining this short and fluffy style and experimenting with colour. I didn't want to bleach my hair again after the stress of growing my natural colour out after that little bleached tuft I had, so I ended up just dying my hair pink as that was the only colour that would take to my natural hair. The colour in this photo is pink and purple hair dye mixed together to make burgundy. I thought this colour looked really nice. I also dyed my eyebrows pink around this time, which I loved. I didn't do it more than a few times though, because eyebrow bleaching is a hassle.

March 2012 - age 21

I was really going for the fluff factor because I still felt self conscious with short hair and wanted to make up for it with some volume. Check out the stylised woods fashion thing going on this photo. Amazing.

June 2012 - age 21

This was about the time I stopped beating myself up about my hair. In this photo it's a peachy orange colour from a fading pink dye, and I'd cut my fringe too short. I liked the fading colour a lot, a slightly ethereal strawberry blonde, and I remember thinking my little pigtails were kinda cute. I don't know what it was, but I just started to notice little things I liked about my hair and I started focusing on them instead of focusing on the parts I didn't like and hating the whole thing. I started to like the too-short fringe, even. I just didn't really care any more.

January 2013 - age 21

I continued to grow my hair and I then discovered pin curling. I got so into curling my hair. I loved making it so big and so different from its natural texture. This also lead to me learning a lot more about hair styling and trying out lots of different plaits and ponytail configurations, changing my parting, etc.

March 2013 - age 22

Look at how much of a bush my hair was here! I loved it.

August 2013 - age 22

I had never been very interested in growing my hair much longer than shoulder length before, but a new love and appreciation for my hair, and an understanding of the increased styling possibilities meant I decided to grow my hair longer than it had ever been before.

March 2014 - age 23

After a while I got tired of my hair constantly being sat on and caught on things, so I chopped it back into a short bob with a blunt fringe. I had started to feel kinda gross with my big mass of hair. It felt stringy and lifeless, so I was happy to have short and bouncy hair again.

30th April 2015 - age 24

Just over a year later, I'm growing it long again, and this time I'm focused on growing out my fringe because I'm not sure I've ever had a properly grown out fringe before and I'm really starting to like the look and ease of fringelessness. I've had this weird lingering concern that I have a big forehead for many years of my life, so I'm combating that by forcing myself to just accept having my forehead on show. It's working well, because I like my forehead a lot more now.

My hair is now about 3 inches (roughly) from the length it was when I cut it, and for all my hair changes I love my hair so much more now that I've been through all these different styles and lengths with it. I wonder what it will look like in a year's time.