The Saga of the Shorn: Me and my skin

Hm, me getting better with Photoshop last year meant that it started becoming my makeup of choice. They say that you can present yourself however you choose over the Internet because you can hide whatever flaws you have and present yourself in the best possible light. It's true when it comes to my face. I profess to be decently self-confident, yet I like getting rid of my awful dark eye circles, zits and other such wonderful flaws.

Not having hair has kinda changed that. I gave up on shampoo, harsh facial cleansers, and have been using water, baking soda, and the like. Works just great so far! (I should start up my olive oil regimen again since my skin's been really dry) I don't really mind how I look in the mornings any more. There's not much I can change. I really like that. It's kinda "Here I am, take or leave" and that's great. Very freeing.

It also leaves me a lot freer to make really ugly weird faces in pictures. I figure, "I'm bald. How much worse could I look?" I'm gonna be interested in seeing how this may or may not change when the hair comes back in. (I was wondering if the part in my hair would change because of the hair clipping... but probably not, because I've checked and my cowlick still makes my hair grow out in a slant)

I've gotten a ton of positive comments lately. People will interrupt their elevator conversations to tell me how fabulous/fantastic they think it is. (It's happened twice in the same elevator in one day, same older faculty-talking-to-younger-TA kinda deal) I think the attention whore in me likes that, but that's not the point of this experiment... and I try to remember that. But it's really kind of people to say such things, to go out of their way to break the usual polite silence barrier and try to affirm me.

Funny, huh, how an outward thing can draw so much attention? Even when people aren't commenting, I'm taking note of all their responses. It makes me wonder how many times a day I subconsciously gauge other people's reactions to me and how much I depend on their approval or disapproval for my actions.

My TA, the one who hates me, has pointedly made no comment about my radically different looks. It amuses me a little. I think he would like to forget that I exist. :)

My stubble has already doubled in length, I think. I had Andrew clip it to 3mm, which is just over 1/10 of an inch. It's definitely longer than that by now. Let's do some math... If hair grows around 3/4-1 inch per month (let's make it easy and say 1 inch), then it grows ~ 1/4 inch every week or so, which averages out to around ~6.4 mm per week, which is what, let's average again... 1mm/day? It's so awesome how I can actually feel it. (I pinch it all the time)

...Blogspot gets a bonus thumbs up from me for saving these drafts automatically. My MacBook has been randomly dying and I can't figure out why. Anyways... I uploaded pics of the shaving process, so here comes a picture-heavy post.

First I hacked my hair shorter with scissors; apparently I have a ton of hair, so it took a lot of snips before you could even really tell anything had happened.

I had a mullet there for a while.

My friend Peggy was horrified and tried to make me stop. "It's not too late still, Katherine!"

I made my friends take a picture of her face because it cracked me up so much.

The first clips! Thank you, Andrew, for buzzing my hair for me. :)

(Here is Andrew)

More trimming

First glimpse

Not bad

This is the ugly stage

Or would it be this?

Man, did those little hair bits itch!

I didn't know this, but you don't just clip through and have done with it. It takes several goes over to make sure you get everything. Check out that little tuft of long.