Stupidly basic hairstyle question for femmes.

[rivka]

If a person's hair has a strongly pronounced natural part on the side, how does that person wear a hairstyle that normally calls for symmetry?

I don't know anything about feminine hairstyles, but (a) it's starting to get hot, and (b) Alex's hair is increasingly in her way, even when we use a barette to keep it out of her eyes. I'd like to do side pigtails, but I'm not sure whether I should disregard her natural part (which seems as though it would look funny, because the part is so pronounced), or have the pigtails be asymmetrical (which seems as though it would look funny too).

This is an area of parenting that I feel completely incompetent about, so I would very much appreciate advice from people who understand long hair and/or hairstyling.

Comments

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

My sister's part is off-center like that, and side pigtails always worked perfectly well on her.

Gods o gods, I wish Elena would let me do *ANYTHING* with her hair. My mom will be here in a couple of weeks, so I'm going to try to let her work her grandma magic on the mop.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Alex really fusses if I try to put her hair into a loop-type holder where her hair needs to be pushed through a ring. She complains that I'm pulling her hair. I just discovered that she's totally fine with a hair tie (http://www.angelamoore.com/pri/mag2.asp?product_id=ME76066&menuCat=Jewelry), where you wrap it around the hair and it's held shut by two beads. Of course, she messes with the pigtails, but I figure that will go away eventually, once she's used to them.

Won't Elena even go for a barette?

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

She was really good about wearing barrettes all last year - I started early, because she had so much hair and it was getting in her face. But just before Christmas, she started refusing. She has let galagan do barrettes for her a few times, and I think she'd let my mom too. But pigtails bring much screaming and howling. Maybe I should try the bead ones.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I took her shopping with me and found some very cute hair ties with big chunky wooden flowers for the beads. She loooved them. Instead of saying "I want to put your hair in pigtails," or whatever, I say, "Do you want to wear those flowers in your hair?"

So maybe if Elena picked out her own barettes/hair ties?

...Or maybe not. Toddlers are so capricious.

[naomikritzer]

My younger daughter (who's 3 1/2) gets all excited about wearing the pretty flowers (or whatever) but will pull them out five minutes later. And then demand that I put them back in. And then pull them out. I think maybe she's half cat.

[tracicle.livejournal.com]

That's my 21-month-old too. I thought I'd start her early so she wouldn't even notice them when she was older. Success is keeping them in for ten minutes at a time. Usually it's more like ten seconds, and then, yes, she asks for them back in over and over.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

She just brought me a star-shaped barrette that was lying around somewhere. I said "Oooo, do you want the star in your hair?" ....and she's wearing it for the moment. I'll have to look for flowers too, and work on this theory.