it's my vanity

feel free to ignore this entry if you're not lisa, fyi. or if you are easily annoyed by bad quality webcam photos from the late 1990s. or if you plan on mocking me for all the unflattering ways i let myself look over the past eight years.

the tagline of this blog refers very specifically to a conversation i had with frank several months ago, in which i informed him of the fact that my hair was my vanity. and then paused. and then said, "and i mean that in a totally jane austen kind of way."

proof and proverbial pudding aside, i just spent the last several hours cleaning hard drives and transferring files between desktop and laptop, in an attempt to organize my life.

in this process, i found many, many photos. and pursuant to a conversation lisa and i had yesterday, i've decided to post them for her (and your) enjoyment. this is by no means exhaustive, so don't go thinking that i wasn't particularly creative in my youth - my resources are just limited, what with scratchy data cds and years worth of file reallocation.

anyway, i give you the timeline of the hair that graces my head, and many of the transformations it survived on its way to becoming the long, gloriously shiny curtain that it is today (irrespective of the fact that i got an overly-zealous bang trimmin' the other day and look slightly like betty page). believe it.

01. this is the most awkward of all my awkward growing out phases, a throwback to the fall of my junior year of high school (1999, man). how freaking young do i look in this photo, seriously?

02. fateful summer of 2000 found me experimenting with varying shades of blonde, especially in the summer. the first is what cera referred to as my "bertha the trucker puff," and i must admit that upon viewing this photo, she wasn't totally wrong. the second one is the blondest i ever managed to get, and i'm sad to say that this is the largest and best photo i have of those days.

03. i began experimenting with color in the fall of 2000, and i have loved this hair more than any hair has ever been loved before (and still kind of do).

04. eventually, my hair started screaming in protest every time i even looked at it, so i returned to something more natural. and i mostly just posted the first one so everyone would know that i was actually kind of cool and hardcore at one point in my life.

05. then, more awkward growing out happened. it would take about five years for me to realize that if i just went through with it completely one time, i wouldn't have to keep going through it over and over.

06. i thought orange highlights might help. then, cera and i got drunk at her brother's house, found some scissors in my glovebox, and decided i needed a haircut (the actual wonder of which is not really demonstrated by the second photo).

07. i let it get decently long when i was in california, but maintained some pretty hideous bang action that shall never be repeated.

08. about a year after that photo, i decided i wanted that haircut again. the woman i went to at supercuts didn't speak english, cut her finger and bled on my head, and then proceeded to give me a bob that hit just the tips of my ears, a blight so horrifying that it lasted less than 24 hours - a 24 hours i spent wearing a hat, crying on scott's bed, and searching for the man who would turn out to be the best stylist i ever had - oh, eddie. if only you weren't in san francisco. what i ended up with was this (look how shiny!). this is the best photo i have, so know that it's about a half-inch long and very spiky in the back.

09. and this terrifying photo is from the winter of 2003, but marks the beginnings of the delight i carry on my head today - the least awkward growing out stage ever, god love that eddie.

and that's the official end, with the exception of the prom pictures (read: burgundy with orange and pink highlights, crimped) i'll show you some other time, when i'm not too lazy to go upstairs and find them.

i'm so sorry about this post.