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Last week, inspired by a lot of people we know in quarantine shaving, colouring, allowing significant others to cut their hair, me and my wonderful friend, Joe Cullen, took to Instagram Live to chat about all things head hair. It was so lovely to have a chat with a mate about our thoughts and feelings about something so intimate. Personally, I don’t often get the opportunity to do that so it was lovely!
Joe and I started to chat about the idea of doing a body image podcast some time last year, with each episode dealing with a particular body part but then quarantine happened and InstaLives erupted. I find them much nicer than a podcast as you can see the people and you feel like you are there chatting with them so we decided to start doing that instead.*
*The podcast may still happen so you are not safe from that yet!
We chatted about everything from historical fashions to what judgements people make about you based on your hair as well as our own experiences including our terrible hairstyles of old. For me, it brought up the time where I lost 90% of my hair a few years back. It was a super stressful time which I have spoken about before on the blog so this was a nice time to reflect on how far I have come since then.
I definitely think more about what products I use on my hair and when finances allow I will spend a little bit more on the products I use. I am one of those people who washes their hair most days, which I know is bad for your hair, so I feel the better products counteract this - with no knowledge that this is true!! I still don’t spend a lot of time styling it day to day except if I am going somewhere special or these days, if it’s a Zoom party that feels like a night out. Small changes I guess.
What happened to my hair was actually bigger than just my hair. It was a massive wake-up call that I had disconnected from looking after myself completely. Anytime in the mirror meant I had to look at my body, hate my body, get into a depressive spiral, have several cry showers and be generally miserable. Man I must have been a hoot to hang out with! So though nothing major has shifted in terms of how I style my hair, it has pushed me to start paying more attention to caring for my body. Simple things that I imagine all of you have been doing for years - brushing my teeth properly, using body lotion, exfoliating, day creams, night creams, face masks etc. There are still so many care products out there and most of them I have no idea what they do or can’t afford them. Speaking of which, in terms of body lotion, I feel I have to use oceans just to cover my body in a thin layer but the bottles are tiny and expensive. How are you all making body lotion a feasible thing?
I am also in therapy and reflecting quite a lot on my behaviours up to now. I have stopped drinking - the aim was for 11 months of 2020 but honestly I am loving it so much I am not sure if I’ll ever go back. I am just generally thinking about myself. Honestly, I know that sounds so basic but I have never really thought about myself. Maybe I felt it was vain, conceited or I was afraid of not liking what I’d find out but I just didn’t go there. I just got up each day, went through the motions of whatever was presented to me and was ending up miserable a lot of the time. Since, attempting to switch that around (believe there is lifelong work to be done here!), I am finally starting to think that maybe it’s not such a bad thing that I am on the planet and there’s so much more to life than worrying about what is in a mirror.
It might seem strange but losing my hair was probably the best thing that ever happened to my body. She screamed and I listened.
Me and Joe will be back talking about foreheads, that’s right, foreheads this week on InstaLive (@ladyflemington) at 8pm Wednesday 29th April if you would like to come and join the chat!
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