Reluctant pixie - how do I grow?

[Beakywitch]

Thank you everyone for the great advice, which I have been thinking about a lot. It's lovely to know I'm not alone and I can come here when I need some support and ideas. Of course I am doing the usual thing of going and checking in the mirror every five minutes to see if my hair has grown at all, lol, but of course it's a long journey. Isn't it funny though, hair can be snipped off in two seconds but takes whole episodes of life to grow back. Hair that people are sitting on was growing through in a different era - how fascinating.

I've been browsing around looking for pictures of women with hair which has inspired me. My real favourite is Nastassja Kinski especially in the film Tess by Roman Polanski. There is a scene where Tess walks along an avenue and we see a back view of her beautiful hair which is BSL or longer with the top section braided to hang centrally at the back under a straw hat. Her hair is smooth and mid brown, very strong looking.

I think my first goal is going to be small - to begin to grow out this pixie by at least deferring my salon appointment. I thought if I call and defer the appointment for another 4 or 5 weeks it will give me some breathing space. If I get on alright I'll cancel that one and feel more confident about letting time pass. I suppose the thing that worries me is how thin my hair could feel if it is still the same as before. I hope I'll discover it has improved.

Beaky

[Xandergrammy]

Welcome! I started out with a pixie at the end of 1995 and decided to bite the bullet and just let it grow. Hairbands and bobby pins were my best friends for several years! Good luck to you!

[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!

[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

[swiftbn]

first of all id like to just simply welcome you to the forums. i too am fairly new, although i have been a member for 3 yrs. well take it from me....at least you didnt start off completely skin tight before reaching the peak of what is known as more than enough. i believe that with all of the solid and awesome advice thus far, youll be "a" ok, sweets.

[LutraLutra]

Everyone's offered really good advice already, and I don't have much to add other than you can grow your hair, you really can. Different people have grown their pixies out in different ways, for me I started with trims every 6 weeks - otherwise I grew an instant mullett - not hot. I gradually let the time between trims get longer and longer until I'd reached a wispy bob cut, and now I'm going to get it cut every 3 months. Happy growing.

[Beakywitch]

Thank you everyone, it's been a real boost reading all the posts today because I'm just on the verge of phoning the salon to cancel my next appointment. This seems hard because as all you past pixies will remember, the hair cuts are addictive when your hair is being constantly shaped. I know that if I don't go for a trim this week I must travel into a difficult space for a while as my hair naturalises itself.

I feel better for the advice you are all giving me. I do have a bag of hair accessories, a couple of scarves, a furry hat and a summer hat. I feel that I ought to just cancel my hair appointment rather than make another yet as hairdressers always want to cut, cut, cut my hair and yes, Delila, my hair has been thinned by chopping in - I want to weep! What was I thinking when I agreed to that? I think hair dressers put people in trances so they can get as much hair from you as possible which they then sell to trolls, lol.

I have decided to stop blowfrying and I've got myself some cone free bars of shampoo and solid conditioner as last time I tried to grow the condition of my hair was awful. I never could understand the reason for this and wondered if it was the chemicals in the products I used. When I grew my hair during the '70s I didn't have the "strangled ends" problem, nor did I use conditioner of any kind as it wasn't something my mother could afford. What could be different now? I know I'm older but surely that wouldn't explain why my ends crumple over time despite being treated with care. I am concluding I am sensitive to the cones.

I know I shouldn't try to make too many changes at once but I feel that a pixie cut is a chance to begin looking after my hair at a much earlier stage than ever before and I feel like experimenting, but I have my cone shampoos at the ready to return to the old routine if I feel unhappy.

I notice that many of you are mature like me - do stylists/friends/family try to persuade you not to have long hair as you get older? The person who cuts my hair believes women should chop past 30. This doesn't exactly help my confidence.

Beaky

[Xandergrammy]

I notice that many of you are mature like me - do stylists/friends/family try to persuade you not to have long hair as you get older? The person who cuts my hair believes women should chop past 30. This doesn't exactly help my confidence.

Beaky

I don't do stylists, but many of my coworkers still suggest every now and then that I get a haircut. After almost 8 years, I'm pretty sure they know that I won't be cutting any time soon. Luckily, my family is very supportive of my hair choices. My advice is to plug up your ears whenever anyone starts talking negative

[Beakywitch]

I don't do stylists, but many of my coworkers still suggest every now and then that I get a haircut. After almost 8 years, I'm pretty sure they know that I won't be cutting any time soon. Luckily, my family is very supportive of my hair choices. My advice is to plug up your ears whenever anyone starts talking negative

Thank you Xandergrammy, your hairstick picture is lovely. I can't access the rest yet though.
Beaky