What Was My Mother Thinking?

When I was still in Elementary school, my mom thought I should get the Dorothy Hamill haircut. It was the new thing and everyone was embracing the style.  I had no idea who she was, but came to learn that she was a famous figure skater. Everyone thought my hair was so cute and I felt so glamorous. I look back at pictures of me and I am so embarrassed! I actually hate that hairstyle and am mortified to show the pictures to anyone! I laugh that it was ever popular.

This was the last time I let my mom choose my hairstyle, but in hindsight, my choices weren’t any better! Isn’t it funny how we think we look so great at the time and years later, we look back and laugh at our hair, clothes, and eyewear? I remember laughing at my grandparents’ great big, black framed glasses and thinking they were ridiculous and now they are very popular again. Lots of colors and styles, the crazier the better!

Actually, my mom is a very talented hairdresser! She could do whatever I wanted, but I was a teenager and had a mind of my own at this point. I had her color my hair bleach blonde the summer before middle school and have been “blonde” ever since. I don’t really know what color my natural hair is to be truthful. I used to ask her to give me a “poodle perm”, meaning, as curly as it could get. The style in much of my school years was frizzy with half my bangs curled under and the rest teased to great heights on top. I was never super extreme in this but I could definitely get some height! I remember laughing at pictures of people from the 60’s and 70’s who had long, straight hair with no bangs and a part down the center and thinking how ridiculous it looked! Funny thing is, that is pretty much what my hair looks like now and I love it!

  

This was the age of Madonna, Cyndi Lauper and Michael Jackson and we all followed their trends. I wore Forenza sweaters (with a long pearl necklace), United Colors of Bennetton clothing, Swatch watches, mini skirt sets (where the top and bottom matched) and leggings. We used to tuck our jeans in from the knee to ankle and safety pin them that way and wear ballet shoes with them. Not ballet-style flats, but real ballet shoes. Skinny jeans didn’t come around until 20+ years later! One day I tried to leave the house wearing a shirt and real long johns (the thermal ones with a flap in the front) as pants and I only made it as far as the door before I was asked to turn around and change!

  Forenza Sweater

Prom was the height of fashion back then and it was popular to have a huge dress. They were so huge that you had to wear a hoop under it like Scarlett O’Hara in order just to walk in it. We looked like wedding cake toppers with great, big off-the-shoulder puffy sleeves, a gathered layer on top of the skirt and often bows, ruffles and lots of lace. They were very beautiful and made us look like Disney princesses, but that sure was a lot of dress! We went bowling after Prom my senior year and it was pretty challenging in a dress that large, but oh, so fun! My date wore a white long-tailed tuxedo with a white top hat (that I thought looked ridiculous!) and ended up sliding on the bowling alley on his stomach and got his tuxedo filthy! Good times!

This is a very similar look to what we wore!

My mom found out that I needed glasses when I was in third grade. My eyes were already pretty bad, she just didn’t realize how bad they were until we were driving home from the eye doctor after I had just received my new glasses and I was noticing that Billboards had words and pictures on them and that trees had tons of individual leaves! I also could see the wrinkles on my knuckles and my fingernails for the first time. I kept lifting my glasses up and then putting them back down to compare what I could see with and without them. My poor Mom felt terrible to realize how bad my vision truly was! I tried to hide it for as long as I could and cheat at the grade school eye tests because I didn’t want to be called a “four eyes” at school. My first pair of glasses were really thick and very large and they only got worse over time (until I had Lasik surgery in my 30’s). I’ve been known to jokingly say that even my cheeks could see better because my glasses were so big!

 Like this!

We had some pretty crazy trends in hair, fashion and eyewear and we make fun of them now, but who knows? Maybe five, ten or fifteen years down the road, we may be going back to them. All I know is that my Mom let me develop my own personal style and sometimes had to put her foot down too! After all, isn’t that what Moms are for?