from the blog

I Want to Be Annie

When I was growing up, the movie Annie really lodged in my brain and informed my ideas of awesomeness for quite a long time.

I wanted to be Annie.

I loved her red curly hair, for instance. It was only at some point after college that I stopped yearning for red hair (and carefully trying to hone my own strawberry blonde version with the assistance of the boxes lined in Aisle 2 at CVS). I just loved that look.

As a result, I had short curly (permed) hair in the 80s. Sadly, however, I also had glasses and braces (Annie, decidedly, did not). I looked, literally, nothing like Annie. My curls were too short, too kinky. I had convinced my grandmother to take me to get a perm on a visit to her (Dang! My parents must have been shocked when they picked me up!). Maybe this was my first lesson in describing things well to a hairstylist, because the look just didn’t translate on me.

But there was something about that spunky orphan. The way she made Daddy Warbucks (and Grace) fall in love with her and want to adopt her. The way she just powered through life’s difficulties (like the Depression and parentlessness). She was one tough motha.

And she rocked her look like nobody’s business.

I wanted that.

So I tried to emulate her look for a long, long time before realizing that wasn’t really my look (how many people can pull off red curly hair?).

But I tried and tried just to be sure.