Elementary Fashion Fail

When I was young, my mother chose to home school my siblings and me for a majority of our education, and as part of that process we were involved in multiple extra-curricular activities. One of those activities was being part of a home school band. I played (or at least tried to play) the trumpet, my sister played the flute and my brother played the saxophone.

As part of any extra-curricular school experience, there was a need for pictures to be taken. A professional had been hired to come take pictures of the band as well as individual pictures of all the band members with their instruments.

I distinctly remember the dress I wore, the dress my sister wore and even the shirt my brother wore. My dress was pink on top with a floral patterned skirt, and I wore my cute little white boots with tassel's on the sides. My sister wore a blue dress with buttons up the front and I even remember the shirt my brother wore. The whole picture day experience was quite a to-do.

My sister and I we were at the point in our youth of extreme sibling rivalry, when she, as the older sister by two years, wanted as little to do with me as possible. So it was expected that we would not be wearing the same color and likewise, it was also preferable that we have our hair done differently. She had shorter blond hair at the time and I had longer brown hair, so there was never really an issue of looking alike, and it was best if we kept it that way.

My mother curled my sister’s hair into an adorable bouncy bob, and I requested to have my hair crimped, as was the fashion trend of a few years prior, that I was hoping to emulate at the time. I had gotten a crimper for Christmas that year and was very excited to have my hair crimped whenever the opportunity presented itself. Unfortunately, I was still young enough that crimping my own hair, especially with the hope of having it turn out nicely, was not a skill I had mastered, so my mother was enlisted to perform the task.

I felt like a million bucks! I loved the crimped style and was very excited to walk into band practice looking so well put together. Even with my gap-toothed grin, I was pleased with my appearance and ready to have my picture taken. I looked adorable… from the front.

What I didn’t realize until the ride home, when I casually reached to the back of my head to twirl my hair between my fingers, was that the back felt very different than the front. It was as stick-straight as it had ever been. No texture, no frizz, no crimp! I demanded to know what was going on, and my mother informed me that we had run out of time when getting ready that morning, and she was unable to complete the crimping for my full head of hair, and I hadn’t noticed during the process. As the crimping was for pictures, she had only crimped the front pieces that would show in the pictures.

I was crestfallen and horrified. I had been walking around all day, so pleased with my crimped coif, only to find out that from any angle other than directly in front, I must have looked like a clown, with crimpy poofs of hair coming down the front, and lanky, straight strings in the back, vaguely reminiscent of a mullet. It was around that moment I decided I needed to take greater control and responsibility over my own grooming tasks.

To this day, I can't look at those pictures without feeling the wave of pre-teen humiliation wash over me, knowing that the back hair was nothing like the front.