Reluctant pixie - how do I grow?

[Beakywitch]

Hello,

I am new and as you can see from my avatar (I hope it's there, lol) I have a short pixie chop. I was growing my hair a few years ago but discovered that much of it had fallen out. I was unsure of the reason, there were several candidates: stress, bereavement and age (I was fortysomething). Although I got to bsl, my hair was sad, stringy and had absent patches, especially at the front. I went to the salon where the stylist suggested cuts to take it up to a blunter look. In the end, in despair, I went for this chop.

I put my boar bristle brush, my coconut oil and hair sticks in a bag in the spare room and tried to forget about it but I used to look around me at women older than myself who had at least shoulder length hair and very thick looking! I thought why me?

Time passed and I have become less stressed. My father's death is now 4 years ago and I have had a moment of realisation. I had been taking Cimetidine, a drug which has the rare side effect of hair loss - could this have been my problem?

I am daring to try and grow again as I have been off the drug for a couple of months and have put myself on a good multivit. I am now almost 46.

How do you reckon I should attempt this? Should I risk regular trims (scissor happy stylists??) or part it down the middle and let mother nature take her course?

I'd be grateful for all your help, my hair is so important to me and I am a sad pixie although I will stay short if it doesn't work out in the long term. I know that people think an older woman shouldn't grow her hair but surely that can't be right - can it??

Beaky

[Kirin]

First, welcome! I feel your pain as you can see on my sidebar i started from a pixie about a year ago, and am now currently at my shoulderblades. Still layered, but working on it!

your hair is of a similar type to mine, so maybe I can help with some walnuts of wisdom and a friendship!

Thin hair, especially as it grows out form short will be ........bleh, for some time to come. I highly recommend forgoing the conventional wisdom here of not styling or using styling products. All this will manage to do, is drive you crazy, make you feel "ugly" with your hair and make you tempted to chop! Until your hair hits your shoulders, don't worry too much about styling, do what you have to do! You can always, if damage occurs, trim it out when it is at a more longer length.

This advice is actually not wholly mine, but from a long hair growing site for MEN. It basically advises not to worry so much about perfect health of your hair, as if you can't stand it to begin with, you are going to get frustrated and get some kind of layers/trim/whatever that will just make the akward phases painfully long.

From a pixie, your hair is going to grow out in the weirdest layers, but resist the temptation to cut them out and going shorter and blunt, just let it go. Your ends may resemble whisps at our fine textures, but you'll be happier in the long run. Once you are arm pit length, you can do dusting trims yourself over time to even up the layers. Again don't focus on a goal of "blunting" the hemline at this length, you'll end up cutting as much as you grow and it will seem futile.

Some of the best advice I can give you as a fine hair, is if you try a new routine, such as shampoo bars, conditioner only washing, whatever....... if you start loosing squirrels full of hair..... STOP! There is no point in hoping that it will eventually "work" and you will stop shedding. Don't repeat my mistake, i lost half of my thickness thinking whatever I should use should work. Against wisdom I've returned to using shampoo daily with no conditioner and only shedding one or two hairs. Its going to be forever until I gain back more hair! I would rather have a few dry ends, than a bun the size of a frozen pea.

Take your vitamins and eat well!

Learn to trim your own hair. With hair short as yours, you wont have to for a while, but in the articles section is Fey's self trim method, it works! I do dusting trims but very irregularly and am waiting now even with scraggy uneven ends to hit at least bra strap length. At that time, I will start cutting off perhaps 1/4 of growth every two months to even out my layers, and let some thickness catch up. My goal is waist........ and I will see from there if I wish to go longer.

I've found I am actually gaining good length by returning to my normal easy routine, although I have adopted using oils and henna (Which has given me crazy candy apple red hair!) and not doing trims at all for some time. I may not trim until I hit the bra strap length, so i can actually GET some length.

Don't feel guilty or bad for anything you have to do to make yourself feel good and pretty with your hair. I still use mousse, gels, and occassionally curling irons. Not daily I grant you, but I reserve them for special occassions where hair is everything.

I hope some of this helps!

[Beakywitch]

Dear Kirin,
Thank you so much! I didn't blow dry yesterday as I thought, oh no I have to look after my hair if I'm that serious and I ended up with a flat day. I had also wondered about the above ear sections of my chop - I am going to have some ear holes in my sides for a long time, lol. I hope I've put myself down for the right classification of hair as I was a bit flustered by them and put what I thought. My hair is very straight, very fine and thin. When cut I look like a dark haired person but as it grows it attains a wonderful corn blonde the surface and can be different colours in different lights, if that makes sense. Within myself I am a long hair as my hair has been at least longish most of my life, sometimes around shoulder length and sometimes much longer. When I cut it I feel wrong. When I look at photos of me with hair to beyond BSL I get a pang of sadness, that's how I need to be. My hair definitely needs to be washed regularly as it gets very oily and I have to be careful what products to use as I am very sensitive, particularly to conditioners.

Beaky

[spidermom]

Welcome. When I grew out from pixie, I'd let it grow for as long as I could stand it (3-4 months), then I'd go in and have a very small trim around the edges only (not the shorter layers). I didn't like uneven, wispy ends; they made me feel ugly. At about arm-pit length, my layers finally caught up with my longest ends; it took 2 years.

[Kirin]

My hair when i was young used to be down to my knees, I went to a concert and someone lighting a cig behind me caught my hair on fire......... I had to chop it all off, all of it, horrible! I never grew long again after that, and its been well over 20 years. I'm trying now, but I look back to my once long locks and just sigh sadly lol.

Try to blow dry on cool, and without constantly raking a brush through your hair, get lift using fingers to comb through it and hold up the roots. I have very fine hair too, and without some sort of product/styling i look like a bald person. I realize the goal is healthy long hair, however my philosophy has changed. My hair is for me, and if I don't like the way it looks, why bother? I am not growing my hair for anyone's approval, but for my own happiness. No one here will alienate you because you decide to grow long hair AND dye/bleach/curl/blowdry......... you'll be reminded its bad for your hair, but it won't exclude you!

Make what you have work for you!

Uuuuuuuuuugh the dread "ear holes!!" when your hair starts coming over your ears and wings out like you have flaps! My weapon of choice for this was hair gel! I would blowdry my hair to have some body until damp (not bone dry) and smooth some gel between my two hands and "feather back" my ear hole hair so it smoothly went back.

Another thing that helps too, is to change your part around. Forcing my hair into a part it didn't normally want to take would give me volume even when my hair felt like being a flat pancake.

Again style sparingly, only when you need to go out to work, or out to a special occassion. No need to do all that if your sitting home in sweats watching TV LOL.

Now that my hair is longer i only style about 5 times a year. There are just times when thin lank hair in a bun the size of a marble just isn't very sexy LOL.

[ReddishRocks]

Kirin - That was some awesome advice.

I had a pixie in late 1999, and I remember some very awkward growing out phases. Obviously my hair's a little different from yours, but I think your advice is sound. My hair used to grow pretty fast, and I was at below armpit length in 2.5 years.

Welcome Beakywitch, from one board-newbie to another.

[Delila]

...Don't feel guilty or bad for anything you have to do to make yourself feel good and pretty with your hair. ...

This is such good advice! As I was growing out my hair, I used styling products to ease the transition. Eventually, though, I found that once my hair got long enough, I preferred NOT using any sort of styling product on my hair. Some things seemed to make tangles worse, others seemed to encourage my hair to turn lank. Eventually I gave them up.

When I was growing out from a pixie, I spread out the times between stylist visits, and worked with them to gain length without sacrificing entirely too much style. First I got trims maybe three times a year, down to two. It took a while, but eventually I gained enough length that I started doing my own trims, and haven't looked back.

For me, growing out my bangs for once and for all was the hardest part. I had my hair in a ponyloop or peacock twist FOREVER, and it felt as though I weren't making any progress, but eventually I did it.

The biggest revelation has been finding out that I have more hair than I'd ever realized. Every stylist who'd ever cut my hair seemed determined to cut in as many layers as possible, all the way to the scalp, to give my fine, relatively thin hair more oomph. What this meant in terms of growing out is that all those layers made my hair seem a lot thinner than it actually is. (Still makes me a bit angry to remember all those stylists all those years telling me, 'see how thin it's getting now that it's long? Time to trim.' Grrr.)

My hair has almost nothing in the way of natural body, so even though it's wavy, it doesn't have any sort of natural lift. Letting it air dry is the best way for me to keep what little body I have. Blowdrying just flattens it all out.

Well, just wanted to chime in with some encouragement, it can be done.

[wintersun99]

First, welcome! I feel your pain as you can see on my sidebar i started from a pixie about a year ago, and am now currently at my shoulderblades. Still layered, but working on it!

your hair is of a similar type to mine, so maybe I can help with some walnuts of wisdom and a friendship!

Thin hair, especially as it grows out form short will be ........bleh, for some time to come. I highly recommend forgoing the conventional wisdom here of not styling or using styling products. All this will manage to do, is drive you crazy, make you feel "ugly" with your hair and make you tempted to chop! Until your hair hits your shoulders, don't worry too much about styling, do what you have to do! You can always, if damage occurs, trim it out when it is at a more longer length.

This advice is actually not wholly mine, but from a long hair growing site for MEN. It basically advises not to worry so much about perfect health of your hair, as if you can't stand it to begin with, you are going to get frustrated and get some kind of layers/trim/whatever that will just make the akward phases painfully long.

From a pixie, your hair is going to grow out in the weirdest layers, but resist the temptation to cut them out and going shorter and blunt, just let it go. Your ends may resemble whisps at our fine textures, but you'll be happier in the long run. Once you are arm pit length, you can do dusting trims yourself over time to even up the layers. Again don't focus on a goal of "blunting" the hemline at this length, you'll end up cutting as much as you grow and it will seem futile.

Some of the best advice I can give you as a fine hair, is if you try a new routine, such as shampoo bars, conditioner only washing, whatever....... if you start loosing squirrels full of hair..... STOP! There is no point in hoping that it will eventually "work" and you will stop shedding. Don't repeat my mistake, i lost half of my thickness thinking whatever I should use should work. Against wisdom I've returned to using shampoo daily with no conditioner and only shedding one or two hairs. Its going to be forever until I gain back more hair! I would rather have a few dry ends, than a bun the size of a frozen pea.

Take your vitamins and eat well!

Learn to trim your own hair. With hair short as yours, you wont have to for a while, but in the articles section is Fey's self trim method, it works! I do dusting trims but very irregularly and am waiting now even with scraggy uneven ends to hit at least bra strap length. At that time, I will start cutting off perhaps 1/4 of growth every two months to even out my layers, and let some thickness catch up. My goal is waist........ and I will see from there if I wish to go longer.

I've found I am actually gaining good length by returning to my normal easy routine, although I have adopted using oils and henna (Which has given me crazy candy apple red hair!) and not doing trims at all for some time. I may not trim until I hit the bra strap length, so i can actually GET some length.

Don't feel guilty or bad for anything you have to do to make yourself feel good and pretty with your hair. I still use mousse, gels, and occassionally curling irons. Not daily I grant you, but I reserve them for special occassions where hair is everything.

I hope some of this helps!

Kirin - I just wanted to quote this whole passage again... thank you for posting this. It's wonderful advice.

Dear OP - I too, just recently cut to Pixie. Measuring the LHC way, it's about 15" but if I just measure the actual length of hair from scalp to tip, it's only about 3". I cut it because of damage and the wish to start fresh. My hair has just grown such that the side length is about 1/2" over the top of the ear. It's a pain and I feel your angst.

Many of the techniques I used when my hair was APL are impossible to really use at this length. So, for now - my routine is basically using a shampoo bar, blow drying, adding some pomade or aloe vera gel to try to smoosh down the hair so it doesn't stand straight up (it still mostly does) and wearing a hat every single day

My intent is to let it grow without trimming. The layers are going to be frustrating, but for now gaining length is the priority. I'm hoping to have something approaching "normal" by summertime.

Welcome to LHC and lots of luck and fast growing to you!

[kelsoberry]

It seems that you've gotten most of the advice that you need already, but let me give you a few tokens of wisdom as well. I had a pixie from high school all through college and a little after, about 10 years. the most important thing is to be stubborn. Your hair will look terrible for a while. Trim as infrequently as possible, and be strict with the stylist when you do letting her know you want to grow it out. A few things that motivated me, I kept a file of pictures on my hard drive of beautiful long hair. Whenever I would get discouraged and want to chop it off I would come back.

In the meantime, I had 2 or 3 tips I used. First, I got some of those micro-claws that hold hair. I'd gather whatever I could in one and leave it there for months at a time. Whenever I went out for the night and wanted to dress it up, I'd put as much wax, gel, hairspray, mousse, whatever in it to give it volume and make it look rock-star messy. Sometimes I would even get clip in hair extensions to help cheer me up as well. Its taken me about a year and a half or two years but I've reached my shoulders. My shortest layers aren't yet at my shoulders but its worth it.

Try to get pictures of yourself in the different stages if you can. I always loved looking at the old pictures of me with my hair shorter, it always made the trip sweeter.

[wintersun99]

... A few things that motivated me, I kept a file of pictures on my hard drive of beautiful long hair. Whenever I would get discouraged and want to chop it off I would come back.

...Try to get pictures of yourself in the different stages if you can. I always loved looking at the old pictures of me with my hair shorter, it always made the trip sweeter.

Yep! This is a fabulous idea! I am doing this also