I encounter this one particulat hairstyle in one out of every ten or twenty thirtysomething women with profiles on match.com. It’s not a bouffant, but it’s short, with all the hair in a “bulb” above their head, with nothing over their ears. The profile of their face and hairlooks like an upside-down pear. Usually hair win this style is dyed dark blonde.
For lack of a better word, I call the aforementioned coif “minivan hair,” because every woman with that do, without exception, has children. By comparison, about half of the thirtysomething match.com women with other hairstyles, whether short or long, are childfree.
Yes, minivan hair is a turn-off, because it seems to make a woman appear far older than she actually is.
Is there a formal name for this hairstyle? Why don’t women without kids have it? Some might say “it’s easy to maintain,” but it doesn’t appear to be low-maintenance compared to simpler but longer hairstyles.
This is a real life example. And another. (I’m going to delete the images in a few days; I don’t know these women, but I still want to respect their privacy.)
One of my friends calls it “female branch bank manager hair.”
I am sure it has a name, but I dont know what it would be, but I did have it by accident last year at about this time…
Went in to have my hair trimmed, and they layered it too short, and that is how it ended up … but I didnt have a perm or anything, I have naturally wavy hair and it does it all by itself :rolleyes: if it had been half an inch shrorter I would have looked like a poodle with a bad hair day
I once was going from a funky asymetical style to very very short. I just wanted a man’s hair cut to start over because I did not know how they wore hair back in the states. The stylist cut my hair the way I wanted and then appalled that it was so mannish, poofed it into that style. I was appalled, because she did not let me see it when it was just short. I went home and immediately washed and dried it. I did have the man cut I wanted.
BTW, I was 18, and had an hourglass figure and realy had the face for the man cut. No one has the face for that poof cut.
It’s not quite “Mushroom Head”, but it’s pretty close. (Mushroom Head is the slightly longer bob that ends just below the ears. A larger Bulb.) Yucko. I will never get any short hairdos and will have long length hippie hair until it all falls out or until death.
I’ve always referred to it as the “Mommy Cut” - it’s low maintenance and quick to take care of, so it works perfectly for moms of young kids.
IMHO, naturally. (Glad to have only had the mommy cut once.)
Nope, it’s not… most people I’ve seen with that cut backcomb the top and use a ton of hairspray unless they are lucky (or unlucky) enough to have poofy/curly hair that does it without all the extra work. Backcombing that can take a little bit, even if you have it down pat.
My Mommy cut is similar only cut longer and the only way it could be more low maintenence (I just wash and go, dressing it up is blowdrying and a bit of root boost) is if I got a man cut (which really doesn’t look good on me, I tried it a couple years back).
(Again, I’m deleting these images in a day or two.)
I’m wondering … if it really isn’t low-maintenance, why are such hairstyles so popular among the minivan crowd? It’s not as if all middle-class suburban thirtysomething single mothers have mom hair or bulb hair, but everyone with that hair is a mom.
It really isn’t sexy at all, because I can’t help but think about Dodge Caravans, soccer practice, Meredith Baxter Birney movies on Lifetime, and PTA meetings when I see it. I can’t see past the mom image with that hairstyle, which is why it’s such a turnoff to me. No sensuality, no sexuality, no fun, no nothing but a Honda Odyssey, violin practice, a refrigerator full of Capri Sun juice boxes, and “Lite FM”.
If a woman with bulb hair writes to me, I can only respond with “sorry, but the attraction isn’t mutual.” I’ll correspond with single mothers, long hair and short, but the mom hair is just such a turn-off.
I have long maintained that the moment that a woman cuts off her hair and gets a perm is the exact moment that she leaves her youth. It is also known as “small market newscaster hair.”
Haj, gazing at his his late 30’s wife with long red hair in a braid
It’s so sad to watch the young moms at my church cut their hair shorter and shorter as their kids get older and older, until finally we have quite a few with basic guy haircuts. I personally don’t like short hair (sorry, Lillith Fair, but at least yours doesn’t look like elmwood’s examples) My hair is always between collar and shoulder length and sometimes longer when I’m really poor.
One quote that has really stuck with me through the years came from, of all things, a cookbook written by a Mormon woman who extolled the virtues of traditional homemaking…this is a woman who melted down candle stubs to make new candles and never gave up on a sliver of soap. In her book she was expressing sorrow for women who got so caught up in trying to do it all that they sacrificed their femininity to convenience by wearing polyester knit pants and getting short, no-fuss haircuts. She quoted a man who complained about that type of haircut by saying " can you imagine how not-sexy it feels to run your hand up that bristly neck?" For some reason that is the only line that stuck with me from her books. Now I know some men really like a woman with short hair, but I’ve never seen the appeal. So I’ll keep my hair (relatively) long and promise never to get one of those bubble-top cuts.
That hairstyle looks good on some and not so good on others. Long hair on women can go bad in just as many ways, if not more, than the short cuts many of you are dissing.
Beyond this, there are lots of fun, smart and vivacious SUV and van driving “mommies” with mommy hair cuts and out there, and not having kids or a successful SO, or a nice vehicle doesn’t automatically make you a more interesting, more sensual, or happier person.
My mom had shoulder-length (bad) hair all my childhood, and one time when I came home from college she’d chopped it off and gotten a short kicky haircut. I love it - it makes her look much younger and it’s very flattering. I also gave up on long hair and chopped it all off a few years ago and have never been happier - it looks sooo much better on me. Neither of us have “bank manager” haircuts, though. And I definately have no children and no minivan. I by no means consider myself “unfeminine” or to have “given up” any of my femininity. I’ve been told I’m a hot babe, even.
Like I said, I certainly don’t have a problem with short hair on women. A couple of months ago, I has a date with a woman that had a bob; I thought she was teh hotness, and was disappointed when she gave me the “just friends” speech a few days later.
I dig sporty or fun short hair. However, that bulb/bubble/bank branch manager/small market news anchor/post-bouffant/upside-down pear hair that, at least to me, identifies a woman that would ask “does it come with a driver-side sliding door?” or “hold it … I think this is the one where Nancy McKeon plays a woman who is trying to get her daughter out of Saudi Arabia” also projects a message that says “not tonight, honey.”
Although it doesn’t have an official-sounding name, “Soccer Mom Hair” would probably be universally recognized as identifying that “short-and-a-bit-poofy-but-all-above-the-ears” do that match.com moms love.
