Locks of Love, 2008

For those who don't know, I've been growing my hair out since sometime in the fall of 2006. It started originally as an experiment (I hadn't had long hair since my teenage years, and I was curious if I'd like it as an adult), but I continued to do it because I found out about a great program called Locks of Love.

Locks of Love is a non-profit group that provides hairpieces to children who are suffering from long-term medical hair loss. From their website, their mission is to:

...return a sense of self, confidence and normalcy to children suffering from hair loss by utilizing donated ponytails to provide the highest quality hair prosthetics to financially disadvantaged children.

So, since the fall of 2006, I've been growing my hair out long enough to donate it to this wonderful program. I've been using fancy conditioners to keep my hair in good shape, and have generally been taking better care of my hair than I ever had previously.

Partly because it's funny and partly because it helps get the word out about Locks of Love, I'm going to share with you my trip to the Salon where I donated my hair.

Read on for all the gory details and to find out why I looked (at least momentarily) like Pippi Longstocking:

1: Preparation

Honestly, my hair was really starting to bug me. It would get in my face, get in my eyes, get in my mouth, and generally annoy me. So I had been wearing it in a pony-tail for a good 9 months now. But, for the actual haircut, I let it out so that it would help keep it tag-free and easy to cut (since I was donating most of it anyway).

I searched all over Indy for a place that did Locks of Love haircuts, but most places I found hadn't ever heard of the program. Of those that had heard of the program, I was most impressed with Bella Naturale, who seemed to be the most knowledgeable about it. So I scheduled my appointment with them.

Here I am sitting in their waiting area before the actual snipping began. As you can see, my hair is really quite long now:

Here is a rear view showing just how long the hair was (honestly, I hadn't seen this angle before now... I had no idea it was that long):

Here I am sitting in the chair just before we begin:

2: Making the "Hair Packets"

Now, before we actually start cutting, we have to bundle the hair into what I'll call "Hair Packets". The idea here is to bind the hair together in smaller chunks which make it easier to ship. The hair stays together and arrives in "hair packets" that are easier to work with.

Typically, when a woman comes in to donate her hair (Locks of Love primarily gets women and girls donating their hair to the program) they don't want to donate all of their hair. They typically only want to donate their pony tails. So, they usually just bundle up the hair beyond the pony-tail and snip that off.

However, I was planning on donating the vast majority of my hair. So, we wound up having to bundle together four "hair packets" in order to get it all.

We started by bundling up the sides, which resulted in me looking very much like the Shaggy Dog:

Here you can see the four "hair packets" starting to take shape:

The following is what I like to call 'Do me "Willy Nelson"-style'...

Bam! Pippi Longstocking!

Here is animation of my "hair packets" building:

3: The Aftermath

After the "hair packets" were cut off, I had quite the fetching appearance:


"Ladies, I'm here to rock your world..."

My stylist then proceeded to make me presentable again:

And, viola! I am now back to my normal, absolutely gorgeous self:

And from the back:

Anyway, Locks of Love is a great program, and I'd highly recommend anyone who is looking to get a short haircut after having their hair out long look into donating to them. Please don't just waste your hair the next time you get it cut, donate it!

All of the images (including ones not shown in this post) can be found online here.