Hair woes

Hair is such a funny thing.  If you have straight hair, you spend all your time wishing for curly hair.  If you have curly hair, you buy countless products to fight the poofiness and frizziness of your hair.  If you have long hair, you cut your hair short for a "change."  3 days later, you lament the fact that you cut your hair and wish you had long hair again.

Views on hair and hairstyles have changed so much throughout history.  A quick hair history lesson:

The ancient Egyptians would shave their hair close to their head in order to stay cool in the scorching heat.  For fancy get-togethers, both men and women would wear long and usually braided wigs, adorned with gold or ivory ornaments.  

Ancient Greek women usually wore their hair loose or tied back into a chignon.  They would dye it red with henna and sprinkle gold powder (their version of lowlights and highlights).

In 17th century Japan, the geisha would wear elaborate hairstyles that were highly lacquered.  These women would have to sleep on special blocks in order to keep their hair styled for the next day.

The Mangbetu women grow their hair out and, using the shape of their elongated head and a cone-shaped basket frame, wrap it up and weave it into the frame and then adorn it with long bone needles.  They achieve their elongated head shape by wrapping their babies' heads with cloth.

In the 15th Century, European women would pluck their hairline to achieve a "high forehead" look.  This allowed the women to wear headpieces that they could show off.  Most European women admired the fair hair of those living in the north and would try to bleach their hair by exposing it to the sun (hello, sun-in!) and using onion skins or saffron.  

By the 18th century, the bigger the better was the mantra for hairstyles.  Women would use horsehair and starch wrapped around a wire frame to create large, creative hairpieces.  This meant that these pieces were rarely washed and therefore attracted lots of vermin.  

More history of hairstyles can be found HERE. 

When I was pregnant, I noticed that my long hair was getting thicker by the day.  During pregnancy, estrogen prevents normal hair loss; hair follicles stay or enter the "resting" phase and don't shed as often as normal.  I already had thick hair, so the extra hair thickness was bothersome to me.  However, now that I am more than 3 months postpartum, my hair is falling out by the hundreds.  Per day.  My hair is everywhere!  I spent 9 blissful months not having to deal with hair in my food, on my clothes, and on the shower curtain and now I am constantly pulling my hair off of me.  This, in turn, makes my "cool mom" haircut look particularly lackluster.  My hair isn't curling as it used to and now it lacks a certain oomph that it did the first month postpartum.

On a separate but related note, I guess the hormones during pregnancy also put my white-hair follicles into overdrive.  I spent the first few months of pregnancy plucking them, but one day, I just said, "eff it" and stopped plucking.  Yes, I embraced my grey hair at 29, 1 whole year before I made the decision to embrace them.  Unfortunately, NONE of the hair that has fallen out has been my grey hairs.  Another interesting note, it seems that these hairs tend to grow in clumps in certain areas: along my forehead and along my part.  I hope that they grow in a white streak along the front of my head, like this:

Stacy from What Not To Wear

Or this:

Rogue, from the X-Men movies.

Hard to see the grey hairs, but they run along my part and my forehead line.

Two grey hairs up close.  They have a different texture than the rest of my hair: wiry and kind of dry.