My new hair cut: feelings and styling

Since about 2007 I’ve been growing out my hair. I’ve had regular trims of a few inches and in 2011 I had straight bangs cut in, but I haven’t had a cut with “style”.  After much deliberation and a self-enforced waiting period of four months while I was in London, I decided to get what is a type of adapted middy haircut.  The middy is a style worn by women in the 1940’s and in conducive to vintage styling techniques. It is essentially a tapered (“U” shaped) cut with a lot of face framing long layers.

Right after it was cut, my hair stylist curled it with a curling iron under for me which gave it its initial look which I was very pleased with.  Unfortunately though, it doesn’t seem to work very well with vintage techniques for some reason. I tried to pin curl it carefully, but the ends still stuck outwards making it more 80’s than anything instead of under. I do not know if I wasn’t careful enough when curling, if it was cut wrong, or if my natural bit of wave is throwing things off. I have had luck with hot roller sets and a curling iron. I haven’t retried the pin curls or foam rollers because I’m afraid to have my hair look horrible and then go to work like that.  Hopefully sometime soon I’ll have a day off where I’m not too tired the night before and try out these other techniques.

One thing I am very grateful for though, is that I can wear this style straight. Many people online, everyone it seems from the fedora lounge, kept saying that the middy or even an adapted longer version was not a “wash and wear” hairstyle. This means that you have to curl it to look nice. For me though, it looks perfectly fine straight which makes this style easier to deal with.

Overall, I’m not quite sure if this was a good idea. I really hope after some more trial and error I will be able to pin curl again because I hate using hot products on my hair and wouldn’t like to bring hot roller with me to college.  Otherwise, I’ll just be growing these layers out then.