The evolution of the ol' weave

I started out as a little girl with short, short hair. Football helmet style.

I had an extra sensitive head, and could NOT handle my mom brushing through my hair when it was longer. People would always say to my mom, "What a beautiful little boy!" and I would repeatedly run away crying. I remember telling my mom, in tears, "I can't wait to have boobs! So everyone will know I'm a girl!" Despite childhood trauma, the short hair just sortof stuck with me. And for some reason all throughout my varying lengths and colors of hair, random strangers have always said to me, "Ya know who you look like? You're a spitting image of..." (some celebrity with the exact same hair style as me at the time). And would honestly be like, "I don't really know what it is..." and I would say, "Actually, we have nothing in common except our hair." and they would say, "No, no... that's not it. You just really look like her!" And I would be like, "ok, if you say so." This went on all through adolescence into adulthood. Funny.

High school: hair was ridiculously short. And many different colors. So easy. But the pics make my husband cringe. I got Charlize Theron, Susan Powter, the lead singer of the Cranberries, and Pink, all of whom coincidentally had ridiculously short hair at the time as well.

First few years of college: little longer, piecy and slightly unruly. Halle Berry was an interesting (and flattering) one to get, but again I'd always say, "Really it's just the hair. She is black...and flawless." I have a couple girlfriends who get asked all the time if they are sisters because they have the same length and color of hair. Doesn't matter that one is like a foot taller than the other, and absolutely nothing else physically in common. Kinda like Halle and me. I mean, unless of course you're referring to our chests, those are very similar.

Jim Carrey was another one I heard. When I first chopped my hair short again in 8th grade, my brother Abe told me I looked like Lloyd Christmas from Dumb and Dumber. And I cried.

Ouch. No pre-pubescent girl should ever be told she looks like a grown man, let alone one as grotesque as him. This particular comparison was always a little cruel, but at least it wasn't from strangers. Only family. And it was good fun. We were actually talking about this phenomenon the other night at a little family get together. My sister's brother in law Seth, was like, "Oh yeah, I can see it, but Jim Carrey is a really good looking guy, it's not bad." What?? It gets better. He then proceeds to say, "People tell me all the time I look like Will Ferrell, and it doesn't bug me," which we kindof laughed about because he looks nothing like Will Ferrell. Come to find out at the end of the night, he very casually says, "Oh wait, did I say Will Ferrell? I meant Collin Ferrell." (As if it changed NOTHING about the story.) We all stood there exchanging confused glances, realizing that we had become stupider because of the verbal exchange that had taken place.

Come to think of it I do see some similarity between ol' Jim and me.

The one that has actually endured the longest (this photo was just taken this summer), much to my husband's delight, is a comparison to his long time Hollywood crush Mandy Moore. I see nothing, again, except an occasional similar hair do. Stop copying me Mandy, get your own hair style. Geez. And stay away from my husband. You do look exceptionally saucy though in that bottom pic.

And for the record, I did grow my hair out on my mission in Paraguay, just to do it, because I was sick of people saying, "I wonder what you'd look like with long hair." And when the mop was long, every single day looking in the mirror was a complete identity crisis. "Who am I?" No one really told me I looked like anyone during that time, but I felt mostly like Tiny Tim. The extra chin didn't help my cause.

That's why I promptly chopped it all off again within weeks of returning home. Identity crisis resolved.