The Evolution of My Hair

Before I write this post, I want to say a few things. The first is that I change my hair because I enjoy it. I like changing things up, and hair is a fairly safe thing to change, assuming you don't fry your hair in the process. I've done that and learned my lesson. The second thing is that a lot of these pictures haven't been seen before. I am pretty self-conscious, and some of these are embarrassing to me. However, I am getting past that and feel that showing these pictures is a way of moving forward.

Having said that, here is the evolution of my hair: cuts, colors, bangs, perms...the whole shebang. Be gentle!


First, let's establish I was a pretty cute kid, ok? Long, blondish hair that eventually would turn brown.

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Through elementary, I mostly kept the style of long brownish hair with bangs. It's worth noting I had a bad cowlick that often made my bangs separate. That was annoying.

Around sixth grade, I decided to try to grow out my bangs. I also went for another short bob cut. It was just meh. Growing out your bangs leads to some interesting "fixes" to keep the bangs out of your face. It's basically bobby pins, headbands, or leaving the bangs to the side. I didn't really do this process very gracefully.


In seventh grade, the bangs were mostly grown out, but I kept the short hair. Add that to the fact that I had braces and well... you get the awkward junior high years.

Sometime in the ninth grade timeframe, I had let my hair get longer, with no bangs, and had my natural brown hair color.

Then I decided I liked highlights. I began highlighting my long hair sometime in the tenth grade year I believe.


By eleventh grade, it was very highlighted -- a dirty blonde color. Still long. But sometime in that year, we had a school play that warranted my dyeing my hair very dark brown. I kept that for a little while.


Then I decided back to highlighting! At the beginning of my senior year, I did something horrible. I got a perm. My hair was long and dirty blonde, and I desperately wanted loose waves (there's an irony here...we'll get to that). So I got a perm from a stylist who promised the perm would loosen up. It didn't. I had tight curls for my whole senior year. It fried my hair so badly that I had to cut off a lot of it and ended up with shoulder length curly hair. The damage even broke off some hair near my forehead so a few hairs stuck straight up unless I sprayed them down. UGH. Never again.


I frequently attempted to straighten the curls out with some awesome John Freida products and a ton of time with a flat iron. It was a grueling process.

Attempted Straightening

Let's jump to freshman year of college. I followed the trend of many freshmen and chopped off my hair into a flippy, short cut (highlighted). I kept my hair short and blondish through the first half of my sophomore year.

Second semester of sophomore year, I let my hair grow out and dyed it darker, with a hint of red. I loved the red! I also discovered around this time frame that I HAD WAVY HAIR!! (see earlier comment from perm era). Who even knew? I had never tried to let my hair do its natural thing, and when I finally did, I was thrilled!

For a while after that, I continued to let it grow long again and kept it a brown color, eventually adding some highlights again, which I did throughout my junior year, letting my dirty blonde hair grow to a long length. This is when I met Jeremy, just FYI.

Jeremy really liked this pic, BTW =)

The summer after junior year, I had seen Elizabethtown with Kirsten Dunst and decided that since (at the time) I resembled her in appearance, I could totally do that platinum blonde look. So I did. Long, super blonde hair.

It was fun! I got a lot of compliments. But it fried my hair. I had to cut it off again because it was so unhealthy.

This was my style most of my senior year in college (What is it with me doing things my senior year??).

After college was work. Let's just lump all these years from college to marriage into one big timeframe of mostly long and brown.

And then we got married after dating for 3 years. My hair was pretty natural by now and I'd decided to do some side bangs.

For a little while after we were married, I tried bangs again. It was a huge step since bangs were the bane of my existence for so long, but I liked the adult version. After a while, I went back to side bangs. For a little while after we were married, I tried bangs again. It was a huge step since bangs were the bane of my existence for so long, but I liked the adult version. After a while, I went back to side bangs.

The most crazy thing I've done with my hair recently is get some blue coloring for fun. And it was fun!

Mostly, I let my hair stay wavy and long (at least shoulder length). I love that my hair is naturally wavy. I love that I can spritz some gel in my hair and it'll do its thing. I wish I'd known this secret much earlier.

Let's recap. My hair has been red, blonde, dirty blonde, dark brown, light brown, and blue.

It's been curly, straight, and wavy.

I've had bangs, no bangs, and side bangs.

This is my hair.