What's the difference between frumpy short hair and hip short hair?
As with so many things, color.
What's the difference between frumpy short hair and hip short hair?
PBR?
I would not say color. I have thick, curly hair and super short hair looks irredeemably awful on me.
What's the difference between frumpy short hair and hip short hair?
Alternative answer: "A shit-ton of product."
4: I just want my hairstyle back, the way Glenn Beck's hairstyle intended.
Alternative answer: "A shit-ton of product."
No, there's definitely plenty of terrible highly-styled short hair.
I suspect my hair will look like this. Thick with lots of cowlicks.
Face bones. People with delicate facial structure can look feminine but edgy and hip with short hair -- if you're not delicate, on the other hand, you end up picking between butch or frumpy. I have thought deeply about this one.
I don't think it's that, either, because I don't think it needs to look attractive to be non-frumpy. There's a difference between stylish and good-looking. Nearly all the women on campus who are over 40 have these terribly un-stylish very short hairbuts. They'd still look like themselves if the top wasn't slightly longer than the bottom, (okay, there's my hypothesis: that it should be all one length), but they'd look less dated.
Off to teach!
9 gets it right and also puts me in mind of Madeline Kahn saying "bone strukshuh!"
I am deciding whether to run down the street and get quickly shorn during the $5.99 morning deal at the place that has that. Paying much for a single-guard clipper cut is silly.
Yeah, I was away a few weeks ago at a sports event, and there were a lot of girls with short hair [it's practical], and you could see pretty well who it worked on and who it didn't, and I think 9 is mostly right. Very occasionally some people can carry off a sort of butch gamine look.
I submit that having curly hair overrides 65-75% of the benefit given by delicate facial structure. I don't look like a china doll or anything, but I am decidedly girly of feature, can't look butch for trying, look like the femmiest-femme of all time with a shaved head, and yet, with short -- not shaved -- hair, I look like a doof.
...the femmiest-femme of all time with a shaved head....
I.e., Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta?
terribly un-stylish very short hairbuts
Well, be fair. That's really hard to shave.
Depends on the specific nature of the curly hair, but I'm not sure exactly how. I've got a friend with hair that would be curly if it were long enough, but does an Audrey Hepburn thing admirably. But I also know people like you where the curliness makes short hair awful.
A few weeks ago I was sitting in on the staff meeting of a different team as a woman explained that she was going to be out that afternoon because she was, as she put it, "finally getting all [her] hair cut off" and further stated that she was pleased her husband had assured her she "would not look like a boy with boobs". It was with some horror that I realized, just a moment later, that I had reflexively said aloud a response I picked up from Rah: "You know, some people pay good money for that."
Happily, she thought that was hilarious as did everyone else in that meeting. They proceeded to erupt with laughter and I tried to find a hole to crawl into and a boulder to pull in after myself. I felt like a total ass, but on reflection it was pretty funny.
My hair is somewhere between wavy and curly, but it is superfine and tends toward stringiness when it gets any length. This makes the pixie / Jean Seberg cut a perfect fit for my hair. (My paunchier-than-in-younger-years jawline may be a different issue.) I think it's actually quite hard to pull off a pixie cut with super straight hair; a bit of curl helps tremendously.
With straight hair you could do a spiky or more angular thing though, which I could never pull off. Or a very shaped, hair-in-front-of-the-ears Liza Minelli thing.
So how common is/was the idea that long hair is for unmarried women, short hair for married? (Not pixie-cut short, I think, but relatively short.) I've read about it a few places, but never hear about it.
Men today don't put nearly enough effort into their hairstyle:
Hairstyles after the mid-1780s dispensed with the pig tail and used the man's own hair carefully cut short and styled. The wind-blown look was the most difficult to achieve. [Lord] Byron slept on curlers to achieve his famous hairstyle.
I think the idea isn't so much short hair for married women as for mothers. The "mommy chop," as I think emdash's wife called it.
Yeah, I got my hair cut fairly short after getting fed up of it being pulled by sticky baby hands all the time. It's gone up and down ever since. I am looking forward to seeing a pic of heebie's cut, I imagine it will look good.
So how common is/was the idea that long hair is for unmarried women, short hair for married?
Super extremely common in places like Texas that place a lot of emphasis on girls looking feminine and married women having achieved their lifelong goal of landing a man and can now be passionate about minivans.
Every single girl in my class this morning (n=14 or 15) has hair past her shoulders. Nearly every woman on campus over 40 has a very short hairstyle.
When my eldest started at this school at age 11, I think there were only 2 or 3 of them with hair above their shoulders out of her year of 93. Hers was very short, a growing-out pixie cut, at the time. Now, on the odd occasion I am at the school, I see a few more older ones with short hair, but it's 90% past shoulder-length, easily.
I on the other hand am growing my hair out. I have never had long hair so I figured I might as well try it while I can.
I think it's less about being married than it is about having kids. Long hair is kind of a pain and when you're packing lunches and wrestling kids into clothes to try to get them to the bus stop, taking the time to do much with your hair beyond pulling it into a ponytail is a luxury few can afford. Especially if you have to go to work yourself.
I'm growing my beard out this week, but that's mostly because I've been too lazy to trim the beard-beard parts of it and too absent-minded to remember to actually shave (i.e., with a razor and shaving cream {actually, I use conditioner, but same idea}) the neck-beard part.
might as well try it while I can
Yeah, I haven't gotten a haircut in about two years now, and it's close to as long as it has ever been. Mostly I'm just taunting all my balding high school friends while I still can, though.
There's certainly the pressure to look feminine, but I think long hair on women - especially young women, particularly young white women - can also be almost the absence of a hairstyle. You don't have to choose a particular style, or think about getting a good haircut. It's just... hair. You can put it up in a ponytail or leave it down or whatever.
I realize that there are also a million ways to pay attention to long hair. Curling it, having layers, putting it in complicated up-dos, product for curliness or shininess or taming or whatever. But I look at 70-80% of the students in my classes, and the long hair seems as much like an anti-style as anything.
So how common is/was the idea that long hair is for unmarried women, short hair for married?
I have been told that it can be rather more expensive to color (or highlight and/or otherwise camouflage the greying of) longer hair.
yay! a haircut thread
yes, there is a very significant divide between "young girl" hair and mommy-hair.
The young women at my campus all sport the same look in the morning--long hair pulled back in a ponytail/bun arrangement and many elastic headbands making sure the hair is away from the face. This way, they still have long hair (which they straighten for going out at night) but during the day, it is all pulled back and not a hassle.
And they are fanatic about pulling it back. In addition to the headbands, there are usually little bobby pins and tiny clips and stuff to keep all their hair off their neck.
Realizing that I only have a few long hair years left in me (long hair emphasizes wrinkles and looks like crap grey), I am growing out my sensible mommy-bob right now. So, at the moment it is a middling crappy length and the layers are off and it sucks--but in 3 more months it should look better!
31 gets it exactly right. Short hair requires effort. Long hair requires basic personal hygiene and a concession to awkwardness in the occasional deployment of jacket hoods.
long hair emphasizes wrinkles and looks like crap grey
I saw a gorgeous woman with long, white hair in Grand Central. I said to myself, "This woman is not American." So I loitered to try to hear her speaking to her companion, et, bien sur, elle parlait français.
yay pixie cut! I have one and I cut my own hair. The keys are as follows:
1) leave a little fringe of bangs that are not regular, but somewhat notched.
2) make sure you have a few longer bits at the side that go i front of your ears like a manga character, and kind of frame your face, even if they end up being the longest.
3) tell your stylist to razor your hair, that is, make the hairs be different lengths.
4) use hella strong styling wax on dry hair to get that "piece-y" just out of bed effect. since it's short you never have to blow dry it, though I've never been a hair dryer user.
I have to get some good shots taken of me and my business partner friday for a magazine article; I'll upload them to the flickr thang.
I ran away with this post half-finished and then came back, so sorry if this VITAL INFORMATION has already been imparted.
I'm not sure anybody else here knew that you and your business partner were getting your pictures taken, alameida.
...like a manga character....
Watching Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is as far as I plan to go in that direction.
leave a little fringe of bangs that are not regular, but somewhat notched
This is what I always request, given that I go for a look somewhere along the lines of "vaguely tousled", but for some reason every single barber/stylist is dead set on giving me the rigorously straight-line-across Vanilla Ice bangs. Ack.
35: There are two lovely women in my apartment building with long grey hair, but that's not America either the Upper West Side.
Stanley, I think when most people think "Vanilla Ice hair", they don't think "bangs".
Interestingly, Vanilla Ice's hair was basically the same as Morrissey's hair. Plus some horizontal lines shaved into the sides.
29: I am also sporting a nascent neglect-beard. It's gotten to where I shave once a week and hope it reads as "insouciantly scruffy" rather than "I have just given up."
Thinking of starting to use shaving cream to see if that makes regular shaving more appealing.
During a recent Fashion Week, I saw a knifelike Modigliani-esque creature with very long, straight, gleaming inky-blue-black hair. Usually patently artificial colors look kind of stupid in natural light, but she looked fantastic.
Thinking of starting to use shaving cream to see if that makes regular shaving more appealing.
What do you use now?
I vote we take up a collection to bribe Stanley into styling his hair per 41.1. I'd put in like a thousand goddamn dollars to see that. Well maybe $20.
Making th process more complicated is the last thing I'd try to make me more likely to shave.
For some reason, the two smartass answers that came to me for 44 were: moose poop or the blood of Christian babies. I shudder to think what that says about me.
I didn't use shaving cream for years until one day I realized I was being ridiculous.
How short is short? I think you can still get a Marilyn Monroe-y vibe without being rail thin (kinda obviously, I guess), although that assumes being a) super feminine and b) always looking like you're on the verge of sex.
I endorse both of those things, obviously, but it is a look.
Moose poop seems quite difficult to use as an emollient since it's pretty solid and pellet-like. Works great to start fires with, though, once it dries out.
44: hot water, a razor, and a sense of resignation. No, I'm kidding about the last one. I just never saw the point of shaving cream. I actually spend extra money to get plain safety razors without some kind of goopy "lubricating strip" because slathering stuff on my face/facial hair never seemed to improve the shaving experience much.
47: It says you confuse shaving materials with weight loss methods. You really cannot cheat, it has to be the blood of innocents.
How short is short? I think you can still get a Marilyn Monroe-y vibe
Much shorter than Marilyn Monroe's hair. I currently have a chin length bob; I'm going boy-cut length.
An old lady died in the bathtub
She died of a terrible fit.
In order to fulfill her wishes,
She was buried in 6 feet of.....
SHAVING CREAM! BE NICE AND CLEAN!
SHAVE EVERY DAY AND YOU'LL ALWAYS BE CLEAN!
A baby fell out of a window.
It would have been dead when it hit.
But good luck was with it that morning,
It landed in a big pile of...
(Altogether now...)
Ack. "All together", of course.
OK, 51 is actually crazy. WTF?
Hollandaise sauce! Made outta eggs!
Rub it all over! Now shave your legs!
I've actually gone entirely in the opposite direction and now use fancy metrosexual shaving product and it is indeed quite pleasant. On the other hand, I shave like once every two weeks at most (thanks, lax standards that go with having a beard!) and it's sort of a production that involves a beard trimmer and scissors and a big mess and so on.
ttaM, no, I'm serious, within the context of not actually believing I am particularly sane about this. It just never seemed like shaving cream did much except fulfill one's mental picture of what shaving looks like. It does not change the fact (much) that you are dragging a sharp piece of metal along your face to hack a bunch of hair off it. You are just dragging it through a bunch of foam as well.
heebie, you're going to look adorable! Somewhat contra alameda, I have very thick hair in a shortish (not quite pixie by my standards) cut and the only product I ever use on it is shampoo. Well, and water, but I'm assuming that doesn't count. Though I did follow her advice about having little forelocks and I also did worry it gave me too much of a Ramona-Flowers-in-Scott-Pilgrim look.
Has anyone else had the problem of shaving gel turning into cement once it encounters plumbing?
It's important to acknowledge that I was just kidding back at comment 59, riffing on heebie's theme. However, if you do decide to go that route, it's important to choose a razor that's made from the proper materials. Like they always say: there's no blade like chrome for the hollandaise.
I think Stanley's dog needs a trim.
Sometimes I fantasize about getting a boy cut. I came home from Boston this weekend and found that my roommate, who also has thick wavy hair, just got one. She's adorable.
I've asked hairdressers what they think about it, and they stare at me for a few minutes with their eyes squinted and say, "How about a fun bob?"
re: 62
It does not change the fact (much) that you are dragging a sharp piece of metal along your face to hack a bunch of hair off it. You are just dragging it through a bunch of foam as well.
Except in actual fact it's completely different, in practice.
(I can't figure out what the particular objection is. Will I look fat? Is my head the wrong shape? Will it become a big blond afro? Will I look like a bulldyke? Some of these chances I'm willing to take!)
Someone I used to know in Glasgow was advised by a hairdresser that she had a really beautifully shaped head and should consider going for a suede-head/shaved look. She actually followed through on the advice. It was a pretty drastic change as before that she'd had really long blonde hair. It worked, though. It was a good look on her.
68: well ok probably and so I bought a thing of Barbasol because it looked friendly, and used it once, and it felt a bit different but made me smell like old man. And then I forgot about it for a while and more recently bought some kind of crunchy granola bullshit shaving cream at Whole Foods that smells pleasant but is made from free-range petroleum or something and doesn't make a very luxuriant foam. So it's an ongoing experiment...
Now I recall; one objection by the last hairdresser is that I'm too cheap and lazy to get it cut every month and it would look like crap.
71: Ah, hence to query to A about Aveeno shaving cream. I may have to try that; I've been cutting my legs to ribbons this fall.
Sometimes I fantasize about getting a boy cut.
Oh god, let's please not restart the circumcision debate.
71: you certainly might try that Origins business I linked to. It doesn't get very foamy but it seems to do the whole improve-the-cutting-surface thing quite ably, and of course it's hilariously expensive as all skin care products should be.
I wish somebody would talk about skin care products for head-shaving so we could have thread unity.
Emollients of the mohels, coming up on unfogged.
73: Precisement, and in fact I had noticed it last trip and looked in two drugstores down here by work, eventually giving up and going to Whole Foodz, as above. I 1) am a big fan of your current coif, 2) would be curious to see something shorter, 3) wouldn't be the one who had to walk around under it if it really was wrong for your face, so I'm not quite voting for it.
I thought it was someone around here who recommended using hair conditioner in lieu of shaving cream. It really works very well!* And you probably already have some!
Also, if shaving cream cans were less easily had, Newman probably wouldn't have been able to use one to try to smuggle out the dinosaur DNA from Jurassic Park, unleashing a sea of chaos and CGI effects.
*Well, for my very minor, twice-a-week, neck-shaving needs, anyway.
71, 73: I have used Clinique's "Cream Shave" for a long time and found it a lot better than everything of comparable and higher cost.* Very cooling and smoothing. A few ladies have remarked positively on its leg-shaving applications.
* That Kiehl's "Eagle" stuff will burn one's face right off the bone.
Yes, hair conditioner works well. I just find it's a little harder to wash off completely if I'm in a rush, but those supersize Fructis bottles tend to work well and last a long time.
I just use the bog standard Proraso shaving cream, in the little plastic dish. Works great if you don't mind that it smells sort of eucalyptusy. And is cheap and old-school.
I just reach into the bog for some mud and shave with that.
long hair emphasizes wrinkles and looks like crap grey
Kiki Smith begs to differ. (Also, surprise! Your wrinkles are going to look just as wrinkly with short hair.)
I guess I've never seen shaving cream in a dish. I remember the stuff in the tube, but not a dish.
Soap softens the follicles; plain bar soap with a brush is fine. Just leave it on for two (2) min before shaving. Steam actually does the same thing-- shaving right after a hot shower is the way to go.
Shaving cream dipped in liquid nitrogen allows to cut away the can, expands only on heating. The cylinder of frozen cream can be deposited into a desk drawer or somewhere else equally hilarious.
I agree with 62 completely. When I finally learned how to use a non-electric razor it seemed that the standard routine was to put the shaving cream on the face, then try to shave, and then remove virtually all the shaving cream and actually shave. Quickly it turned out that hot water worked just as well.
I am jealous of all the people I know with dark hair and awesome-looking gray (esp when it comes in stripes!). My hair is light enough I think it will just start looking dusty as I age.
I totally agree with 85. You look like yourself, ultimately.
I use Pledge to keep my hair from getting dusty (and because of the nice lemon scent).
OT: Which is healthier, Swedish Fish or Dots? I'm trying to take better care of myself.
Wasn't it the rule (Gilded/Edwardian Age) that single women could not wear their hair up and that married women should? In both cases, the hair should be long. (And this was a rule for people of means.)
I went searching in Emily Post, but can't find it in the 1922 edition's chapter on dress. It does have some choice passages, such as:
For example: A conspicuous evidence of bad style that has persisted through numberless changes in fashion, is the over-dressed and over-trimmed head. The woman of uncultivated taste has no more sense of moderation than the Queen of the Cannibals. Also, Had she been a girl earning her living, she could not have been more suitably dressed, but her millions and her palace background demand that her clothes be at least moderately in keeping.
I just use the bog standard Proraso shaving cream, in the little plastic dish
I bought a tube of Proraso recently and do quite like it. I think a tube can probably last me a year. I have also used shaving soap. The cream seems a little easier and faster to get a nice lather.
89: My sister went gray-on-black starting in her early twenties, and it does look great -- she keeps it shoulder-length and curly and it looks all dramatic.
My hair is graying irritatingly -- there's been enough gray that I can see it for almost a decade now, but it's not quite to the point where anyone who wasn't staring at my hair looking for gray would notice it. I keep on waiting to have to make some kind of decision about what sort of hairstyle works with gray (mostly, I'm worried that my current long-straight-no-style look will look uncomfortably Halloween witchy in gray) but it never quite gets to that point. I suppose I should just stop paying attention, and figure I'll notice when it gets gray enough that I should get a haircut.
93.1: Not married/unmarried, girls/women, at least I think that's the Victorian rule. You had your hair down until you were a social adult, and then put it up.
I wonder if hair dye (in the to-prevent-grey sense, not the Manic Panic™ thing) is becoming less prevalent. My mom dyes what would would almost certainly be mostly grey hair, as she has done since her twenties. My grandpa has a big Blogojevichian mop of hair that everyone knew he dyed. Then, recently, he gave up the ghost and just let it all go grey/white. Quite a dramatic shift, that was.
I shave with an electric razor. I suppose this makes me not quite a whole man, but since I'm circumcised that wouldn't be possible for me in any case.
You had your hair down until you were a social adult, and then put it up.
I think that's right. I got it garbled.
92:
Swedish fish pros: omega-3 fatty acids.
Swedish fish con: They're so delicious that you (and by "you" I mean "I") can easily eat a pound at one sitting.
Dots cons: You (and by "you" I mean "you") look like you're slobbering over a strip of adding machine tape.
Dots pros: None.
92: Go with the Swedish fish. More Omega-3 fatty acids.
I thought Dots were the gummy truncated-cone things, not the paper with colored sugar on it.
100.2: I suspect Moby was referring to this kind of Dots.
103, 104: I was indeed thinking of those Dots.
103: Yes, I think those are Candy Buttons.
Thank God we sorted that out. Next?
I wonder if hair dye (in the to-prevent-grey sense, not the Manic Panic™ thing) is becoming less prevalent.
Well done coloring can look totally natural, so how would we know? But salon hair color is very expensive as a monthly or 6-weekly maintenance habit, and the home version just isn't that great. I know several people who've sworn off, and say the only reason they'd ever color again is if they had to look for a job. I quit coloring 3 or 4 years ago. I was a little disappointed in the amount of grey hair I turned out to have.
Maybe skip the gummy things altogether and locate some Dippin' Dots, because then you'll be in the future.
I remember going on a trip to my preschool teacher's cabin and finding that she had candy buttons, as well as the suckers with loop-shaped crinkled paper stems (of which we were allowed to choose one), on long rolls for dispensing in her kitchen, like tape or, more recently, paper towels.
It was very exciting.
I'm worried that my current long-straight-no-style look will look uncomfortably Halloween witchy in gray
You won't be a witch... you'll be you.
38 Watching Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is as far as I plan to go in that direction.
So I read all of those comics last weekend, and found them a lot of fun after the first volume or two when things seemed kind of iffy. But I haven't seen the movie, and from reading the books and what I gathered from the reviews I read, I have a feeling it makes the Manic Pixie Dream Girl error in a bad way. (The books didn't, though they sort of skirted it at times, especially in the first volume. In the end, it's really Scott himself who seems like the least developed and interesting character.) So I'm wondering if it actually sucks, despite the glowing praise it got from everyone I know who saw it.
114: I think if you have the books as background it works, and if you're just in it for visual spectacle it works. But if you're looking for depth and nuance (which I do believe the books had, a lot!) it won't be there unless you put it in on your own. I wouldn't say it sucks and I enjoyed it a lot, but I have a hell of a lot of bias here for reasons I don't really want to disclose on unfogged.
112:
It was the first time I was made aware of the danger of ticks falling from the trees and burrowing their way into your flesh (this was before Lyme's disease, but still). So, yeah.
I would definitely vote for the superiority of the comics over the movie, much as I'm sorry the movie was such a box-office disappointment.
115: Thanks. I guess I'll plan to see it once Netflix has it.
I generally shave in a hot shower, so I rarely use shaving cream, but I do use this Kiehl's product. Only now do I see how expensive it is (it was a gift), but I'm hooked.
So I read all of those comics last weekend, and found them a lot of fun after the first volume or two when things seemed kind of iffy.
Huh. I bought the first volume and it seemed kind of iffy, so I was going to drop it. I should read the others, you say?
121: I thought they were fun. I'm not making any very strong claim, but I enjoyed the later volumes (4 in particular, IIRC?). YMMV.
The movie had a very broad, Warner Brothers cartoon feel all the way through, which worked well with some of the fight scenes, but lost any sense of depth or nuance, as Thorn said, in the breakneck pacing. The comics are very much adopting and playing on conventions of Japanese manga, which has a much more varied pace, and being a long serial, have time to actually develop the characters and their world.
I especially thought the part of the movie where Scott goes after Ramona essentially against her wishes (there's some transparent plot device involving a mind control chip after the fact) was weird and unappealing. Or sexist, I guess, is the word I should use?
121- I found the first volume pretty funny, but then, I'm easy that way. But it seems to be the consensus that the comics improve in subsequent volumes. Your mileage may... melt barium solicitously etc. etc.
I second essear on 4 being the most fun.
hooray for haircuts! I used to keep my hair very short, like a shag carpet. Now it is doing a weird bob dylan/ thomas jefferson thing. Not sure that's the best look for me but I'm going to ride it out.
I got some Aveeno shaving cream stuff in a gift bag at a bachelorette party a few years ago (I was a bridesman) and it was pretty fucking fab. I went back to a razor for a while just to use it. These days I'm in ♥ with my Philips arcitec. It's like getting a face massage first thing in the morning. The thing to keep in mind is that if one shaves with a razor, one shaves after showering; if one shaves with an electric shaver, one shaves before. After a bath the beard hairs are soft enough for foam to make a difference; before a shower, they're stiff enough for a pre-shave a la Lectric Shave to push them over the edge into being extremely easy to cut.
On the topic of Scott Pilgrim, I couldn't make it past volume 2 because I liked everything about it except for Scott Pilgrim himself. I was very entertained by the movie but didn't love it for the same reason. He's a whiny little mouse of a character. Ramona could do much, much better than that wasted sack of water and trace elements.
Yeah, SP was a lot of fun to watch, but I had grumbles about the gender stuff:
So the film's plot is a kind of listless lad sexual wish-fulfillment: attractive strangers can be wooed and won by no exertion greater than really good videogame-playing. It's Nice Guy apologetics (spoiler alert) in which if a girl tells you she's getting back together with her slightly more alpha-male ex-boyfriend, it's not likely to be her own feelings and emotions playing out, let alone something wrong with you -- it's [...]
Spoiler mostly redacted.
I thought the movie rather brilliantly melded movies, video games, and anime, and was very fun, but, yeah, there was not much depth to the characters or the plot. Why would Ramona fall for Scott? OTOH, Ramona is not that interesting herself.
My Pink Kryptonite co-blogger and I wrote a spoilery team-up review and we both had some problems with the gender and sexuality stuff. It's very much what it seemed like - at that age - every 22 year old straight guy wanted to have happen: a much more interesting person literally skating into his life and shaking it up.
Now everyone should go right out and see Social Network. It may not be very accurate, but it is perfectly crafted.
The one review I recall hearing (Bob Mondello maybe?) about the Social Network said that the only actor who turned in an impressive role was Justin Timberlake, which was enough to make me go, "Hm."
I didn't mean right now. Keep commenting, for god's sake: I'm bored.
Counterpoint: everyone delivered impressive performances. Including JT.
Funny, I just read the SP comics three weeks ago (and decided to wait for the movie on DVD) inspired by this review which is very good but contains spoilers.
For me the key to enjoying the comic was realizing that Scott Pilgrim is, for whatever reason, remarkably attractive to women. This was made much easier for me by the fact that I have a friend who was at that age (a) constantly broke, (b) somewhat directionless, (c) not particularly successful at relationships but (d) extremely attractive and good at hooking up with new people despite being a introverted geek. So I just imagined Scott Pilgrim as a fictional version of that friend and then the whole comic arc worked quite well.
So I don't think of it as simply fantasy or wish fulfillment but as part of the character, even though no reason is given why he would be so attractive.
Aren't most "attractive" guys attractive to het women for fairly mysterious (to het men) reasons?
Except the ones with money or prehensile tails.
Aren't most "attractive" guys attractive to het women for fairly mysterious (to het men) reasons?
Sure. Or, at least some combination of comprehensible (said friend is distinctly pretty, in a masculine way) and mysterious reasons.
My point wasn't to express surprise, just to note that it made that element of the Scott Pilgrim comics much less of a stumbling block for me.
124: I'm bored.
Here ya go. (I think it has been a round a while, but new to me.)
The one review I recall hearing (Bob Mondello maybe?) about the Social Network said that the only actor who turned in an impressive role was Justin Timberlake, which was enough to make me go, "Hm."
The best part is that Justin Timberlake is one of the double-digit number of superstar recording artists of the 21st century and he plays the guy who claims to have destroyed the music industry.
I think NickS gets it right. I'd add that Michael Cera would have been better cast as the Young Neil character. The SP character in the comic is dim and self-centered, but he's a good-natured happy-go-lucky type, not a Cera-type awkward sensitive dork.
I do really want to see The Social Network now.
I'd add that Michael Cera would have been better cast as the Young Neil character.
Yeah, reading the comic books I thought, repeatedly, that I couldn't picture Cera as SP. But I'm still looking forward to seeing the movie when it comes out on Netflix.
Fincher manages to make sitting in front of a computer interesting.
My hunch, confirmed by FB friends who were Harvard undergrads during that era: the parties in The Social Network are waaaaay crazier than any real parties at Harvard.
Fincher manages to make sitting in front of a computer interesting.
Wow! I have a vague memory of a time when Unfogged could do that too.
I wish somebody would talk about skin care products for head-shaving so we could have thread unity.
I use this Clinique gel when I actually shave my head. I've been perfectly happy with it and it's certainly cheaper than the Lush stuff I used to use.
I decline to see The Social Network for anything less than Aphrodite herself and ten million a year.
As for Scott Pilgrim: the movie and the first book made me feel jarringly old, while seeming like The Kind of Thing That Older People Think Younger People Will Ought to Like; I didn't like the art that much; I never liked 8-bit games that much; Ramona Flowers seemed unpleasant and dull in a way that one would read as "challengingly mysterious and alluring" only in a much more beautiful actress with a less tediously monotone voice;* the Internet's war on "Nice Guys" reminds me a little of Andrew Sullivan's post-9/11 fifth columnist-hunting; I can't believe people cared that much about the gender politics of a manga-styled Canadian slacker, of all things; nerds' fantasies of being lovable aren't much less ridiculous than their fantasies of being powerful.
* Because I'm a sexist a bourgeois aesthete.
I think I may have ordered a The Social Network-themed sandwich at a bar featured in the movie and maybe don't need to see the movie itself now. I mean there wasn't an exemption coupon folded around my cutlery or anything, but it's just my sense of how these things work.
149: at this point you were basically in the movie.
I was embarrassed for that bar.
Don't they still have those whole-head dryer things? You could have a very warm cut.
I think I'll like it more in a few days to few weeks. He mentioned that it will take a little while to "settle down".
It's very spiky all over the entire top of my head, which I wasn't expecting. When the spikes are glued down with product, it looks like Rachel Maddow, which is okay with me.
Also he ignored the long conversation we had about not making the sides and back shorter than the top. I really am asking for what I want. Really.
I said, "I really like the way people's hair looks when they buzz it all off and it grows back on it's own. So I don't want the sides and back shorter than the top." Doesn't that make it sound like I know what I'm asking for?
Proper judgment is impossible if we don't have a photo, heebie.
151: I just can't figure out who the intended audience is. Unless the movie is HUGE and maybe spins off into a sitcom, there aren't going to be, like, "Sex & the City Tour" type things taking Je/sse Ei/senberg fans around Boston to favorite haunts from the movie, and students at the local university seem likely to react with heavy doses of mockery. Negligible categories of likely customer elided for the sake of my (non-existent) point, this leaves Salt-of-the-earth Townie Regulars, and I don't think they found a clever, facebook-themed name for "your cheapest beer, and keep it coming."
Improper judgment, on the other hand, can proceed with reckless abandon.
157: on the one hand, that isn't really a salt-of-the-earth townie regular bar; the ordinary crowd (on, like, trivia nights) tends more to grad students and... well, I don't know, actually. I've only been there once. Anyhow, it's not in a really townie part of... town. Also, I mentioned the facebook-heavy overhaul of the menu to one of my coworkers and she was super excited to go there. So you just never know!
Anyhow, Boston, being basically provincial, tends to be the kind of place where people hang fiercely on to any brief and minor fame they might have once enjoyed. I mean, you're talking about a city where a bar that loosely inspired a sitcom that was popular twenty-five years ago is one of the biggest tourist attractions.
On the topic of Scott Pilgrim, I couldn't make it past volume 2 because I liked everything about it except for Scott Pilgrim himself. I was very entertained by the movie but didn't love it for the same reason. He's a whiny little mouse of a character. Ramona could do much, much better than that wasted sack of water and trace elements.
On Twitter, the author has approvingly linked to a review arguing that Knives is to Scott as Scott is to Ramona.
All right, there's 2 photos added to the flickr group.
I haven't gotten a haircut in about two years now, and it's close to as long as it has ever been
it looks like Rachel Maddow
True.
he ignored the long conversation we had about not making the sides and back shorter than the top
True.
Is it worth calling and saying, "Hey, the sides and back are quite a bit shorter than the top, which isn't what I asked for."
I've gone back to someone before when they can fix the haircut by taking more off, which I definitely don't want here. I mostly want him to know that this customer resents him interpreting her wishes. Ie venting.
Boston, being basically provincial, tends to be the kind of place where people hang fiercely on to any brief and minor fame they might have once enjoyed
Smile when you say that, bub.
Also, I mentioned the facebook-heavy overhaul of the menu to one of my coworkers and she was super excited to go there.
This is difficult for me to understand. "That sandwich sounded pretty gross when it was called 'Pulled Pork on a Bun' but now that it's called 'The Open Facebook' it sounds fucking delicious!"
168: she just was really into the movie and thought it was a cute gimmick. I dunno, you'd have to ask her.
165 is a real request for advice.
I can't help but read 164 as sung by Biggie Smalls and Lil Kim.
165, 169: It isn't worth it. Interpretations vary as much as skills. Go to somebody else whose execution you prefer.
I've gone back to someone before when they can fix the haircut by taking more off, which I definitely don't want here.
Are you sure? How long is it on top? A pixie cut can be really short. Also, did he use a thinning shears at all? I was going to say this earlier, but I think the thinning shears (start almost right next to the scalp, snip several times up each hank of hair) does wonders for the pixie shaping.
And your hair has some curl to it, right? That will make it look a little different. And even when there isn't as much of a difference in length between the top and the back & sides, I still find that I feel for a day or two after a cut like I have a poofy pile of hair on top of my head. It definitely will 'settle down'.
165:
As a tyke, I once responded to a barber's desultory "Well, what do you think?" with "You don't sell hats, do you?" I was a bit relieved that he & the others working actually laughed, though I was indeed furious--I hadn't quite convinced myself it would be worth it when they kicked my 8-year-old ass.
That being said, I recommend waiting a week. There's some chance he was right that you'll like it better, which gives weight to "Look, it turned out OK, but I'd appreciate you telling me before you do something I specifically asked you not to do." Or you'll like it less, which helps you say, "I told you what I wanted, and you did something else, and now I don't like it." Either way he has little choice but to apologize.
Call back today, and it's too easy for him to shrug it off.
What's the bar with the Facebook-themed menu? Google isn't helping.
Are you sure? How long is it on top? A pixie cut can be really short. Also, did he use a thinning shears at all? I was going to say this earlier, but I think the thinning shears
It's about 1.5 inches on top. He did use the thinning shears on the sides and back. It just looks much more mature and professional, I think, than I wanted. I dunno. It would have looked sloppier with the sides and back longer, and I want it to look a little sloppier. (Of course, it will get sloppier as it grows out. So I'm sure pretty soon I'll feel better.)
Rah is probably right about waiting a week.
It's just annoying to have your request so completely disregarded.
176: so.
Warning: sort ofembarrassing use of auto-play sound.
178: I like how their eggs may cause "food Bourne illness". A new Robert Ludlum novel?
It's an every-movie-themed restaurant.
Heebie, the other thing about a short cut, if I remember correctly -- it's been quite a while since I've had shorter hair -- is that it'll look optimal at some point as it's growing out. I've heard it advised that you might go back to the hairdresser at that point just to model yourself and say, for future reference: here, this is how I like it.
Sometimes they can then cut it that way next time; or it may be that it's just not going to look its best immediately, but only during the middle period before a trim is needed. I guess that depends on how often you want to go in for a cut, too.
3: I have thick, curly hair and super short hair looks irredeemably awful on me.
Ha. Yeah, curly hair here too, though it's fine. I look like little orphan annie with short hair, which, uh, nuh-uh. My kind of short hair, anyway, gets curlier the shorter it is. (Anyone with teh curly hair ever have bangs cut to the level of your eyebrows, say 2 inches long when the hair is wet, and it curls up to your hairline when it dries? The horror.)
it looks like Rachel Maddow
There's also an Alison Bechdel thing going on.
Anyone with teh curly hair ever have bangs cut to the level of your eyebrows, say 2 inches long when the hair is wet, and it curls up to your hairline when it dries?
Yes, this, exactly. Alameida's description of what makes for a cute pixie cut is spot on, but each point of what I am sure are adorable, jagged, piecey bangs on her would be a too-short pin curl sitting on my forehead.
182: Not quite pin-curls, but close enough. I have haircut phobia for this reason, and whenever I do have my hair cut professionally, have to struggle not to lecture the person: Please realize, haircutting person! This hair curls up an inch for every two inches of its length! If I am to have bangs at the level of my eyebrows, they have to be cut at level of my lips!*
But lecturing people or being generally fearful isn't the greatest thing, so I've cut my own hair for the last 10 years.
* That said, there's a lot of good advice out there for curly-haired types seeking a hair cut, all of which makes sense.
Huh.
170 isn't at all objectionable, but it also aint me.
You did? I don't see it in the flickr pool.
did it work? I guess no one's awake to check.
and now I suddenly wonder what the property otherwise lovely readers would share which would be hypothetically usuitable.
It did, and bears out my 'delicate facial bones' theory. I seethe with envy.
191: Heebie said -- having very short haircuts that are longer on top and shorter on the back and sides. I don't think that works as a general rule; while the all-one-length like a shaved head growing out cut can look good, I don't think the very short sides, a little longer on top type of cuts are doomed to frumpiness.
I always suspect that the hairdresser knows how to do a stylish cut but is giving me the frumpy cut because they think I'm old and boring. There's something rather sad about trying to convince your hairdresser that you're actually kind of hip.
Sorry to ask this again, but I was supposed to email Armsmasher about being welcomed to the flickr pool, right? So far that hasn't worked and haircut pictures really make me want to try again because I'll be due for a cut soon.
194: I'm still holding a grudge over a haircut I got a month after Sally was born -- I was all scruffy and lumpy and figured a new haircut would help me pull myself back together, so I went to Bumble & Bumble and dropped an awful lot of money (for me) on what should have been a really good cut. And it was awful. I suspected that the stylist looked at a scruffy, lumpy woman, and gave her a scruffy, lumpy haircut.
Independently of haircut, I have terrible end of pregnancy insomnia, and woke up totally furious about this cut, in such a state that it woke me up completely and then I was stuck, wide awake.
So I resolved to focus on:
1. Everyone cuts pregnant women tons of slack, and
2. It will be in a different stage in a month.
And that's that. I do feel much better. At the moment. We'll see how committed I can stay.
195: Try emailing ogged@unfogged.com. He still gets that email, and he's the other one with the keys to the group.
terrible end of pregnancy insomnia
I hated that so much, knowing that this was my last shot for a good night's sleep before the baby was born, and still not being able to sleep. But you'll be through it soon.
I did, 20%. I'm incredibly slow to anger. Generally unless someone actually yells at me, I excuse everything that happens during the interaction, and only later reflect on it and slowly notice if I'm mad. So my initial reaction was "Whoa, there's a lot to get used to about this new look! Yikes!" and it was only later that I pinpointed that what I don't like is exactly what I asked him not to do.
Whoa, there's a lot to get used to about this new look! Yikes!"
I think this is why stylists often won't chop all your hair off in one go. Once when I had hair somewhere down the middle of my back and wanted the bulk of it chopped, the stylist said, "Nope! It'll be too different and you will hate it, no matter what. I'll cut it to your shoulders and you can come back after that." I *did* come back after that (like 4 or 6 weeks after) and was only willing to go about chin-length.
194: Why not go to the hairdresser with some of your gay raver friends?
That's a shame. You should have refused to pay altogether. (That's not intended as a comment on your haircut, but on his ignoring your instructions.) (I wouldn't have refused to pay, of course (and like you, would have tipped), but I figure other people are better at these sorts of things than I am.)
I think this is why stylists often won't chop all your hair off in one go.
He was worried about this, and had a long talk with me about my cowlicks and what I should expect, and how it's going to fan up in the front (which it does) and never lay down nicely. And that he usually recommends people with this many cowlicks (apparently I've got weirdly angled hair all over my head) stay a bit longer on top, to weigh it down. I really do appreciate that whole conversation that we had; he handled that really well.
I think I'll go back, because he's very competent and not too pricey, and we have two mutual friends in common. And when I'm instructing him for the next cut, I can say "Last time the length of the sides and back was 1/2" while the top was 1 1/2", and that's not what I wanted: could you do this instead" and just keep it practical and instructional and not angry.
I'm quite happy to not tip, if I don't like the end result of some service, or other. But then I'm a stingy Scot.
I'm often surprised by how much variation I can get with my own hair, which is basically a bog-standard bloke haircut. Some people do it in a way that's just ineffably better than the rest.
yeah, my husband, who is not an appearance-obsessed type at all, used to ride the train all the way out to toa payoh or some shit when his stylist ivan moved. awesome to have a chinese guy named ivan. he just gave the most flattering haircuts ever. he got fancy with the thinning shears. eventually he moved again or dropped off the map somehow. now my husband has what appears to be the identical haircut but is somehow less flattering.
Thanks, LB. That worked and I've now shared a Rowan photo. I didn't add any of my haircut or of certain meetup attendees (self included) in bathing suits, but that's because everyone knows kids are cuter, even if they're on the cusp of 16 with their silly tattoos vaguely visible.
I've been pretty resolved and upbeat all day about this stupid haircut, but I just succumbed to a bout of anger and I'm all worked up again at the moment. I want to email him or something. Maybe under the pretext of finding out if there's something he can do. But mostly just so that he knows when he second-guessed what I asked for he got it very wrong.
Deep breaths, Heebie. Serenity now.
The plus side is that a short haircut that will grow out into something you like gives you more pleasure over time than if it's perfect at first. But I remember being miserable about haircuts and it's why I grew my hair. Sorry you don't like it. I'd always console myself by reminding myself that I'm the one person who doesn't have to look at it....
Fury receding...back to cheerful resignation. Just need a day or two to get used to my reflection. (I took a shower and was trying to style it, was what set me off.)
