Long –> Lob –> Stacked Asymmetrical Bob

Oh, a post full of cell phone snaps?! Rachel, you’ve outdone yourself! *applause*

One of my most popular posts ever—which I find ironic because I am not a hair/beauty person—is my post about growing out my pixie haircut a few years ago. That pixie was a lot of fun, and even while I was growing it out, I knew I’d take it shorter again someday. There’s just something about short hair. I can never resist for long.

I baby stepped into it over the past few weeks, and am now left wondering why I ever bothered with long hair when this is clearly so much better?! 

We’ll back up a tad—after roughly 3 years of growing my hair out, it had gotten pretty dang long (by my standards, at least). My hair is very fine, and I don’t have a ton of it. And I don’t think it looked thin, exactly, but the longer it got, the clearer it became that I’m just never going to have the thick Disney princess hair I was picturing when I decided to grow it out.

In case anyone wants a refresher, here’s a truly terrible picture (taken by Forrest, which explains its terribleness) from a few months ago. Pretty darn long hair there.

For quite a while, I had fun with it being long . . . but man, over the past few months, it started to get to me. The longer it grew, the thinner and scragglier it looked (even with frequent trims). And the time commitment was just way more than I was willing to put in—at this length, I could only get away with waiting maybe a day or two between washes (with shorter hair, I can pretty easily go 3-4 days between washes), and my hair doesn’t air dry nicely, so I was spending too much time blow drying and styling it. It looked nice maybe one or two days a week, and the rest of the time it was in a bun. Buns are fine, but it felt like a waste to me to have long hair that only really looked nice one or two days a week.

So I went in for a long bob (I believe the youngins these days are calling it a lob?)—I figured that way, I’d keep all the benefits of long hair, but with way less time needed to make it look good (plus, I hoped losing some length might help with my issue of it looking fine and thin).

I had my hair stylist bring it to roughly collarbone length in the front, and slightly shorter in the back. I thought it was cute at this length, and I liked that I still had the fun styling variety that you get with longer hair—I liked it best wavy, but it also looked pretty good straightened (which I apparently never took a picture of). And it was just long enough to be able to put up, which is a nice option to have.

But after a whopping 2 or 3 days with this haircut, I got annoyed with it. Even after cutting off roughly 8 inches, it still felt so long to me. And I was getting thoroughly tired of long hair, and totally willing to go all in with something short. I waited a few weeks so my hairstylist wouldn’t think I was insane, then went back in for round 2.

This time, I was fully committed to the idea of it being short, so I didn’t fiddle around. I went with an asymmetrical stacked bob—short, stacked layers in the back with longer layers around my face, plus one side is longer than the other in the front, which is super fun and (in my humble opinion) gives it a little edge so it doesn’t look too ‘mom hair.’ We also did a subtle ombre, which does not show up very clearly in my high quality photography here.

I have loved this haircut so far, and I’m so glad I went ahead and chopped basically all of my hair off. The styling time is totally reasonable, it isn’t difficult for me to style (even for me, and I’m not terribly talented at hair stuffs), and to my delight, I can go a little longer between washes (I’ve been washing it every 3 or 4 days).

Unsurprisingly, I wish I’d gone even a little shorter, and am planning to do just that in a few weeks. It feels so good to be back to short hair. Having been at both ends of the spectrum, I have to say, I do prefer it short. It feels a lot more ‘me.’ I had forgotten, until the minute I cut off 8 inches, how having shorter hair makes me feel so much more confident and pretty. I’m sure I’ll end up growing it out again someday, but for now, short is feeling so very right.