<p>Speaking of hairstyles…in the 60’s when I was in elementary school, there were always a few girls in my class whose moms gave them Toni home perms the night before picture day. Thankfully not me.</p>
<p>frazzeled, I got glasses in first grade to go with my pixie. They weren’t cateye glasses…maybe worse…they were baby blue. Pixie hair and BLUE glasses?</p>
<p>^^and, sadly, you probably were the envy of many of the other girls.</p>
<ul>
<li>signed, a fellow pixie-cut survivor (we should get our own ribbon…maybe a “blush” color!)</li>
</ul>
<p>I got a pixie haircut (curly hair) in about 1960 and looked exactly like Hayley Mills in The Parent Trap. It was a great haircut for me and I have had very short hair almost my entire life. It’s worked for me. Whenever I tried to grow my hair it was a disaster.</p>
<p>My mother deeply damaged my psyche with a pixie too! I had no idea there were so many other survivors. I had beautiful thick hair I could sit on. Right before kindergarten–wop! Stick-straight hour is <em>not</em> attractive in a pixie cut. I managed to sit on my hair again by 4th grade, when she did it to me again.</p>
<p>We went on a cross-county month long vacation and I was hospitalized with poison ivy. The registration clerk called me a boy. That was it!! Never again. I have had shoulder to bra strap length hair for the last 35 years.</p>
<p>Am I supposed to feel consoled she kept the chopped-off braids and gave them to me?</p>
<p>Another pixie cut here. My sister and I were given identical cuts from about age 3 on. Finally around 2nd grade, mom let us grow them out, but we had to keep the bangs. I remember pushing them back with a wide plastic headband. Not sure, but I bet it was red.</p>
<p>Later on, I grew out to Farrah length and nurtured those wings. I’ve never had short hair since. </p>
<p>Oh, and at various times I had white go-go boots, fishnets, fringed moccasins, culouttes and midriff baring halter tops with lowrise jeans. (Not all at once of course). None of this could be worn to school. We wore dresses and HOSE in TEXAS. Pantyhose were the new thing, of course.</p>
<p>I remember the first year we were allowed to wear pants to high school. No jeans and the tops had to be as long as a dress. My friends and I all had matching polyester pantsuits made. Mine was yellow, the others were lavendar, mint green and coral, I think. We were so cool.</p>
<p>So many memories…I had a red faux leather skirt and a matching vest with long fringe on it. I also had the red knee high boots. Seventh grade I think.</p>
<p>The pantsuits sound fabulous, eggmom.</p>
<p>eggmom, we’re sistahs from different mistahs… I do think the growing up in Texas gives the whole “growing up in the '70’s” its own vibe. Middle school polyester pantsuits (as long as the top was fingertip length); gauchos, home-studded (think pre- “bedazzled”) jeans and “wings” hairstyle in high school; wearing hose and heels, even during a torrential rain, in college. Farrah hair, sprayed to the point that it took on a life of its own in the fore-mentioned rainstorms.</p>
<p>Another pixie survivor here. My mom made me wear my hair short until I finally got to grow my hair out in 5th grade. I’ve worn it long all the rest of my life, except for a short time after S2 was born (I blame that hair cut on post-partum depression). When my mom saw me with short hair she said “Why did you cut your hair? You look awful in short hair. You always did.” Thanks mom.</p>
<p>Packmom–me too! My first eyeglasses, acquired in fourth grade, had powder blue metallic frames; the next were pink metallic. In those days I only wore them for distance and certainly never wore them in photos, so there is no evidence of my questionable fashion choices, but I remember thinking they were fantastic. My teeth were so messed up that I started with braces in second grade and wore them for five years, so that means for at least one year I sported a pixie cut, blue glasses and braces combo. Add to that the saddle shoes my foot doctor father made me wear while everyone else wore penny loafers or Keds. My poor young self!</p>
<p>This trip down memory lane wouldn’t be compete without a mention of the stockings and garter belts we wore in the days preceding pantihose (the greatest invention since fire). Remember how every now and then a garter would audibly pop open at the most inopportune moment?</p>
<p>My mother yanked my hair into pigtails so hard, I would have preferred a pixie cut.<br>
Is a pixie like a bowl cut?</p>
<p>MommaJ…ahem…you described MY closet!!</p>
<p>Re: glasses…ok…I begged for pink or blue to go with my stinking pixie haircut…my mom insisted I get WHITE wing tip glasses. Go ahead…laugh. When I was in 8th grade, I saved my OWN money so I could get round wire rims and contacts BEFORE I went to high school.</p>
<p>I got pink glasses in 2nd grade to go with my pink Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang dress that my mom sewed for me. A real knock-out! Aside from that memorable fashion statement, I mostly recall lots and lots of polyester bell bottoms.</p>
<p>mousegray the Pixie was layered and short over the ears. If you were lucky it was long enough to “rat” on top so that you didnt look like a 9 year old boy. Of course, in those days the boys had sidewalls, so that helped define the young sexes.</p>
<p>I just remembered our required gym outfits for HS. They were white shirts and shorts, but the shorts were like bloomers with elastic on the legs. The tops were not long enough to cover much and both pieces had snaps, not buttons. If you did something vigorous, the snaps would pop open.</p>
<p>And SoCalGal, thanks for the reminder about “fingertips.” Our dresses and pants suit tops had to be fingertip length. I was once sent to detention for wearing a nearly knee length fringed vest over my pants. The assistant principal would not count the fringe. </p>
<p>those were the days …</p>
<p>Wow. I didn’t know so many had a pixie. I would have felt better because it seemed to me that all the other girls had long, luscious locks.</p>
<p>My mom harped and harped about my weight. In my mind’s eye I was an 800 lb blimp with a pin head and a pixie haircut.</p>
<p>Recently classmates posted my first and second grade photos on facebook, and I was shocked to see a very pretty normal-sized girl with a pixie haircut.</p>
<p>I am another Pixie survivor. My mom always said I could have long hair when I was old enough to take care of it myself. I still don’t know why she did that but she did save me from the pink or blue glasses. She had quite an argument with the optician. Her daughter was not wearing those frames. They had little poodles in the corners! The optician finally conceded that a special order could be placed for light brown frames with no poodles, and that is what I wore.</p>
<p>Fellow pixie survivor. Mine was a defensive move - for years my mom had been pulling my hair into the tightest ponytails on top of my head (after which the hair was rolled onto a donut shaped roller to make a tight ballerina bun), and she actually pulled a lot of my hair out!</p>
<p>Also survived the horror of the 80’s perm. Thankfully, I woke up sophomore year of college and had my LONG permed hair (with straight, blunt cut bangs) cut into a shag. It started a trend and at least six other girls in the dorm got shags within the next couple of weeks. Practicality finally won out.</p>
<p>Sophomore year we girls all shopped in the boys dept for Polo shirts, John Henry button up oxford shirts and way oversized boys jeans (size 36 on a size 28 frame) held up with regimantal striped fabric belts. Sperry’s finished off the look.</p>
<p>Just pulled out my “This is Your Life” photo album my Mom made for me many years ago.
It’s a photographic trip through my life from birth to h.s. graduation. </p>
<p>There is a group picture of my kindergarten class (circa 1967). There were eighteen girls. Nine had some form of the pixie. </p>
<p>I have very thick wavy hair and was always green with envy of those with straight long smooth hair during my school years. I dreamed of a ponytail. I let it grow out a couple of times but my own mother said I looked like a sheepdog. Consequently, I have had short hair most my adult life and have made peace with it. And it all started with the pixie. </p>
<p>Here’s another thing that was big “back in the day”…Black lights and black light paint.
Anybody have it in your room? My brother’s room faced the street. He painted every inch of the room in various colors of black light paint. Mom was mortified. Afraid someone would see it driving by and think we were hippies/drug dealers.</p>
<p>Another pixie survivor here. But it was my grandmother’s fault. I was sent off to spend a week with grandparents sporting a braid down to my waist. Grandmother asked if I wanted my hair cut while she was getting her perm. “Sure!” My mother has never forgiven my grandmother.</p>
<p>BUT…from that day forward I did not wear braids wrapped around my ears. And that was waaay before we had Princess Leia to look up to. So maybe that Pixie wasn’t so bad after all.</p>
<p>Back to those Wallabies. They didn’t sell that brand where I shopped. I think I had Wannabies.</p>
<p>Funny story: DD had a classmate with a very controlling mother. She called here frantic one day before school when the girls were in third grade.</p>
<p>Mrs. Crazy: I don’t know what to do.</p>
<p>Me: Truly alarmed – Why, what’s wrong?</p>
<p>Mrs. Crazy: Pricilla is staging a rebellion.</p>
<p>Me: Oh? She doesn’t want to go to school?</p>
<p>Mrs. Crazy: No. Worse. She. Won’t. Wear. Her. Bun.!!! What should I do?</p>
<p>Me: Hm. Let her go to school with her hair down.</p>
<p>Mrs. Crazy: But isn’t that a dangerous precedent?</p>
<p>Me: I think it will be alright.</p>
<p>I have no idea why she called me. My DD had gorgeous waist length hair (before puberty turned into wild pre-Raphaelite hair) that she wore down with bangs every single day. What I learned from the pixie: don’t cut their hair.</p>
<p>And as for short hair – my hair is so thick, coarse, was curly, now just slightly wavy that if I have short hair I get basketball head (my darling name for it.) A head so round with hair it looks like I’m wearing a rug or wig. I must have a round head to begin with, but it is not good. I think on a narrow head it would look better.</p>
<p>Thank goodness for layers. My hair is never short than shoulders but very layered.</p>