This is your freshly washed hair.
http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc22/jennasauers/P1000417.jpg
And you kind of love it. It’s curly, but not bushy. It’s shiny and it feels soft. It isn’t tangly, and it reminds you of your little-girl wish for a head of big, tumbling curls.
If only there was anything that could be done to keep it this way: Within hours of waking up, your hair has inevitably fallen flat, its curls have unfurled, and it’s starting to look more like its normal, abused, shaggy mess. Snares of tangles follow by lunchtime. As soon as you give in to the temptation of the hairbrush, you know you’re sunk. Every strand separates and stands aloft from its neighbours in a big, frizzy halo.
http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc22/jennasauers/P1000292.jpg
This is salon-grade, professionally-treated, blown-out, serum-shined, hot-ironed, fresh-from-the-chair hair. You are dreaming if you think you could ever in your life replicate this at home. It feels like spun silk, it’s been three days and you haven’t had to do more than run a comb through it each morning, and every time you pull it — effortlessly, one-handedly! — into a ponytail, it feels like 50% of its mass has been smoothed away. If hair had a bond rating, your locks would be AAA. Yours is the Berkshire Hathaway of hair. It might as well be made of rainbows and shed strands of unicorn tail, because you will never see hair like this again — outside of another visit to your stylist.
Nonetheless, you will convince yourself. All she did was blow-dry it and then use a straightening iron. You‘ve got a straightening iron. After the fifth day, all your New Haircut softness and manageability drops off precipitously, and you’re left pondering those powdered shampoos in the drugstore. Anything to nurse along the salon glow. But what you really need is a shower, a shower where you get your hair wet. So you buck up.
http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc22/jennasauers/P1000306.jpg
This is more like it. You had almost managed to forget, to kid yourself that you had Good Hair. It was always the same old dry mane, it’s just that some Italian chick with a superior hair skillset had her temporary way with your locks. And the worst part is, even looking at this photo, you’re still thinking, At least I did a pretty good job on the side bangs. They don’t totally suck.
Yeah. Model to model: Fuck you, girl on the box.
11 responses so far ↓
Shelley // February 13, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Haha! So true!
1brittany // February 15, 2008 at 9:50 pm
haha thats exactly how i feel! except in paris its static too.. hald is blowing up like an arfo and the other half is puffy yet still in a way glued to your head.. hate the stylist for showing we have to pay so much for perfection!
Nick VanAlstyne // February 24, 2008 at 4:46 am
OMG you are so funny I love your blog. I love talking to other models it’s so fascinating to hear about all the differnt stuff that goes on with you and to know that we are all just real people with crazy stuff that happens to us, concerns that are real and just an awesomeness that precedes itself! Thanks!
<3
Nick.
Lisa // February 25, 2008 at 6:21 am
I love how that’s exactly how my hair is, even down to the side bangs!
I found out about your blog through someone on TFS and I managed to read it all :) I just wanted to say that you strike me as an hilarious and clever individual and I hope you keep up this blog, I will definitely check on it every once in a while. Haha in fact I’m sure if I knew you in real life we’d really hit it off.
Okay, that sounded really creepy, I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean it to come off as stalkerish and crazy :P
Oh and I hope you join thefashionspot if you haven’t already; it’s a fun place to be at. If you need an invite, let me know :)
Shelley // February 28, 2008 at 6:18 pm
She has a thread at TFS and has kindly commented in it.
See the Ali Michael story in the Wall Street Journal today? It is so cruel how casting directors and designers insist that models look sooo skinny on the runway. Half the people on the Weight thread say it’s natural. ha!
inaya // February 28, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Your blog is so amusing for me :)
glad I came across it on tFS. Keep up the good work, all around. xx
Lance Campeau // March 1, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Your so hot I’m getting choked up over here.
photojenna // March 3, 2008 at 3:36 am
Lisa — We have birthdays one day apart. Birthday neighbour! And I figure I sound like a weirdo half the time on the Internet; You didn’t trigger my creep Geiger half as badly as old Lance did. Sorry, Lance. But sending strange women bloggers comments about how “choked up” you are over their hotness is perhaps not the best opening line. File for future use!
Lance and Inaya — Thanks for reading! I really appreciate your comments.
Shelley — Yeah that Ali Michaels story is wack. I haven’t seen her lately so I don’t know how much weight, if any, she’s really put on. I don’t quite buy the WSJ’s take on things — in my opinion, Twiggy and Verushka were in their day quite as skinny as contemporary runway models — but if Ali still indeed has a 23-inch waist, as the journalist claimed in the lede, I can’t imagine her legs being anything close to “fat.” Ridiculous.
You do hear murmurings about models being banned from show castings for things like starting birth control or quitting smoking, and then gaining a few pounds, since runway models are held to such excruciating standards. (About everything, not just measurements: I’ve known girls who lost work because designers wanted models half an inch taller so a hem would sit “correctly,” and casting agents telling girls their arms were “too long” and other minutae.) It can be depressing.
Lisa // March 6, 2008 at 12:15 am
Haha I love it when I find birthday twins/neighbours :D December babies are the best don’t you think?!!!
sophie // March 11, 2008 at 1:10 am
sauers, has your hair turned ginger in your old age?
photojenna // March 11, 2008 at 4:20 am
It has a little. Isn’t it odd? I think it’s mostly lighting, but there is a definite reddish cast.
Old age has also given me two grey hairs, just above my forehead. I found the first in Milwaukee when I was 19. Nothing is more depressing than waking up in a shitty motel in a strange rustbelt city and finding your first grey hair.
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