HAIR!

First of all, CONGRATULATIONS to Maureen on the launch of NOT READY FOR MOM JEANS! I seriously cannot wait to read this. I love her voice and I'm really looking forward to seeing what kinds of knots Clare can tie herself into this time! Sartorially or otherwise.

As for me? My fashion faux pas usually happen above my neck.

Here's the thing about being shortsighted. When I go to the salon, and take off my glasses for the duration of the procedure, I have absolutely NO idea what's going on with my head until the thing's done and there's no turning back. This has led to some... interesting coifs.

Some years ago I let an obviously deranged stylist have a go at the ol' locks. He cut my bangs asymmetrically, in two layers, dyed the underside black and the rest of my hair bright red. The end result looked as if I was a French femme fatale spy in disguise whose wig had slipped.

My mother said I looked like Biff Naked. I don't even want to know how she knew who that was.

Then there was the spiral perm. The end result of which was that, in high school, one of my numerous nicknames was Fluffy the Wonder Poodle. That's the kind of a name that sticks with a girl.

Once I came away from the rinse station with the hair at the back of my head showing a muddy shade of green. I was in the salon until ten that night as my stylist had to perform a rather extensive color correction due to something the previous stylist had used. I think it might have been toxic.

I stick with straight now. And blonde. And a hairdresser who seems as though they haven't been in the back room sipping cough syrup all afternoon. And I have a team on standby to do an intervention the next time I say: "I'm thinking of having something different done with my hair this time..."

Fashion + Pre-teen Years = Disaster

Before I delve into my fashion mistakes, I just want to take a moment to say that I had the pleasure of reading an advanced copy of NOT READY FOR MOM JEANS, and I’m so excited that it’s finally out so that every one else can enjoy it!! It is a must read this summer – funny and overwhelmingly relatable for new moms and non-new moms alike. In the book, Clare tackles the dilemma that all new moms are faced with – can a woman still work and be a mom, and how can she be good at both? Add to that a cast of hysterical yet exceedingly real friends and family, and I found myself instantly absorbed in Clare’s life. Once I picked it up, I could not put it down and read the whole thing in almost one sitting!

So now to my fashion mistakes. Oh, there were too many to recount here. Remember my post a few weeks ago about my fabulous mom – well one of the fabulous things about her was that she always told me to make my own decisions. From a very early age, she wanted me to take responsibility for my actions. Apparently, this included my clothing choices. I’ve looked at many a picture from my childhood days and asked my mom what she was thinking to dress me that way. Her response is always the same, that it was my decision what I wanted to wear. Ahem.

Of course, I think my worst fashion mistakes were in my middle school years. I remember a fascination with tie-dye in sixth grade – I had this matching tie-dye pants/shirt set, and then a bright pink tie-dye shirt that I used to wear tucked into my tight rolled jeans (Okay, this last mistake was not entirely my fault, as tight rolling jeans used to be the only cool way to wear them, and sadly, in sixth grade, I was a fashion follower.)

However, if we’re talking about my worst fashion mistake ever, I’d have to say it was this. In seventh grade my best friend and I decided we should wear matching outfits to our school dance. Stop right there, you say? No, it gets better. The outfits we chose were these black and hot pink shirt dresses with big obnoxious silver zippers up the front, and we wore these over black leggings, of course. And yet, we got the reaction we hoped for when our collective crush took a double take when he saw us at the dance and called us “twins.” At the time we thought this was The. Best. Outfit. Ever.

Looking back I can laugh, because who hasn’t had a fashion mistake in their early pre-teen years? Isn’t that a rite of passage? So what was your worst pre-teen fashion faux pax?