Hairstyle Suggestions

[marcmagus]

I appear to actually be serious about this at the moment, although I don't know if it's going to last. But the medical purposes argument is working in my head right now (I won't hurt myself in hair care, so I might feel and heal better; hair will also be less of an impediment to exercise such as going for a swim, so ditto, etc.) The reminder that it's not a permanent change, would be back to "long" within a few months and back to normal in a year or two helps.

So, soliciting opinions time. If I decide to cut my hair "short", what style should I go for. What reflects my personality as you know me? What do you think I'd enjoy and have fun with and would be a source of happiness?

Considerations: Part of the goal is to take a load off my arms. Required care probably shouldn't be too much more than washing in the morning and brief maintenance in front of the mirror afterward. My hair is very prone to what's commonly referred to as "Jew-Fro" in an unpleasant way; this should be accounted for.

Also, should I employ use of dye to render my hair a color human genetics never intended? If so, what color?

Links to photos of suggested cuts totally welcome.

(Note: because of the poofiness, shoulder length with option to gather worked quite poorly for me in 1997. I believe the defining quote was "It looks like a squirrel climbing up your back." I'll entertain ideas for long but not so long, but they'd need to account for this, offer significant improvement over the current state of affairs, and not result in my commonly having hair on my face. Hair, even/especially a single hair, touching my face is a thing—it freaks me out at a visceral level and I can't concentrate on anything else until it goes away. Kind of like feeling something with lots of legs crawling around on your back.)

Have fun!

Comments

[barometry]

First of all, I'd like to second a recommendation one of the commenters on one of your previous posts made: The website Naturally Curly has some very good recommendations for reducing over-all frizziness and increasing glossy curliness, though most of the useful stuff is in their forums.

There's less content for men, but good content overall, including suggestions for low-cost hair maintenance. The advice there, which I think would work well for your hair type, is to wash your hair infrequently, condition with a silicone-free conditioner very frequently, only comb your hair with a wide-toothed comb, and use small amounts of silicone-free styling product to define your curls and manage frizz. There are lots of very good before-and-after pictures there, to give you an idea of whether this might be effective for your hair. From experience I can tell you that it's super low-maintenance, and also prevents the intensely puffy hair I had throughout high school.

In response to your question about style, I think you might look good with sort of 2-3 inch hair all over, assuming your hair would curl/wave at that length. Here are some pictures of what I'm envisioning. Another advantage of this kind of style is that you'd be likely to be able to go for longer between cuts, and it might be easier to cut it/have it cut for you at home.

I would not recommend a "traditional" short back-and-sides, slightly longer-on-top haircut. My experience with that hair style (on myself) is that it just means that if your hair puffs up, it puffs straight up, and also looks terrible very shortly after you've gotten it cut. I also wouldn't recommend shoulder-length hair, because I think it's a sub-optimal hair length for almost everyone, and particularly for people whose hair is puffy/frizzy.

(Indeed, I have given lots of thought to hair styles over the years.)

Oh, also, the hair the main character has in Brick, which might be just visible in my icon, is similar to what I'm thinking of.

[barometry]

I just re-read your entry, and actually paid attention to the no-hair-on-face requirement this time around. Which... rather rules out all the pictures I linked to.

Perhaps slightly shorter than that? I still think you'd look good without hair that is not shorter on the sides than it is on the top. Or else having the hair around your face be at least chin-length, if you're okay with hair falling across your forehead as long as it's larger locks of hair (this would also allow the long pieces around your face to be tucked behind your ears, if they were bothering you).

[marcmagus]

Thanks for the links. The hair type thing at that site was a large part of my inspiration to get a really good look at what my hair actually really looks like when I'm not messing about with it, so thanks.

And as it's been drying and getting into my face I'm finding it more annoying and distracting than ohmygodgetitoffnow!

So now that I've changed my mind and believe I might be capable of those styles, and am not clawing at my face to get rid of my hair at the moment, they're not completely off the table.

OTOH, the hair on skin thing is worse when I have any stubble. While I'd like to be really good about shaving daily, I'm not sure signing myself up for misery if I ever miss a day is the approach I want to take to improve that. And I'm not sure how my 5 o'clock darkness will feel (I get 9am shadow and 12 o'clock dusk, so, yeah). We'll see. In any case, I really appreciate the input. And locks of hair seem to be a bit better than single strands (and forehead better than anywhere I grow facial hair).

[marcmagus]

So the link to the fora apparently provided exactly the intense waterhose of information I needed to sift through to get my mind working and feel like I was getting a good handle on some options and the reasoning behind them and such. Thanks.