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In December, I went to a holiday gathering, and a woman asked me if I had been wearing a wig lately. The question surprised me for a second, but I quickly understood why she might think that.
My hair usually has some curl/wave (it used to have a lot more curl when I was younger, and the texture has changed over the years with pregnancies and life), but lately I’ve been getting blowouts that take the curl away and give me a sleek, smooth bob. And if you’re used to seeing me with frizzy, curly hair, then I can imagine the sleek, smooth bob looks like a wig.
I’ve got a pretty dreamy-to-me hair-styling situation at the moment: We have a hairstylist literally next door to our house, so I wash my hair and walk next store while it’s towel-dry, and twenty minutes later, my hair is blown out and ready to go. And then, if I’m careful to avoid rain (something I do have to think about in very wet Normandy), I can keep the blowout looking good for five days or so. All that’s required is 30 seconds of combing my hair in the morning and my hair looks great!
I spend twenty minutes and I don’t have to think about my hair for five days? I love that for me.
But back to the wig comment. I’m not wearing a wig these days, but I have worn one before. And I’m sure it’s still hanging out in a box in our storage room. I bought it when we lived in California and I had a pixie cut and was thinking about growing it out. I’d grown out a pixie before and thought using a wig might help me through the most awkward parts.
Buying a not-costume wig was really intimidating to me. I watched a bunch of wig videos on youtube (there are SO MANY) to try and get a sense of the options and terminology, and eventually I narrowed it down to a few wig brands and wig models I thought I might like in real life. Then I went to a local wig store, actually tried things on, and purchased one. I chose a high-quality synthetic wig and felt like that would be a good starting point. I brought it to my stylist and she trimmed it a bit to help it look as natural as possible.
I did wear it a few times, but not as much as I thought I might. For a few reasons:
1) I never felt like I really understood how to secure the wig to my hair. It didn’t fall off or anything, but I always felt a bit nervous that it might fall off while I was wearing it.
2) It was easy to fit a wig over a pixie cut, but as my hair grew out, I never learned how to do my hair beneath the wig to keep it really flat (do I need pins? some kind of cap?), so that it didn’t cause lumps on the surface.
3) Oh my goodness the wig made my scalp itch!
But sometimes the wig really came in handy. If I needed to be on camera and hadn’t had time to get my hair done, and I could just pull on the wig. Once, we put together a family photo shoot in Central Park — we were re-creating the locations and colors from a photoshoot that we had done a decade earlier. I was wearing my hair in a blonde pixie cut at the time and I felt it looked out of place in the photos — too different from the original photoshoot. So I put on my wig instead and it was perfect.
But, I had the photographer, Candice Stringham, take some photos with the wig and without, so I’ve got a good comparison to show you:
As I mentioned, I love my hair-styling situation at the moment. At the same time, I sometimes quite stressed by how much hair I’m seeing in the shower drain these days. My hair is substantially thinner than it used to be, and seems to get thinner all the time. And there’s perpetually a new layer of baby hair coming in around the edges.
Trying to figure out the why of the hair loss is frustrating. Is it genetic? Is it just a normal part of aging? Is it specific to peri-menopause? Is it a side effect of something I’m eating? Or not eating? I’ve tried biotin and I’ve tried vitamin E — both of which were recommended to me to curb hair loss — but I didn’t see a difference with either.
Since I can still make my hair presentable, I’m not too bothered by the hair loss/hair thinning. But I wish someone with the same experience could help me manage my expectations. Will my hair keep thinning till I’m bald? Does the thinning stop once I go through menopause? Should I be trying to stop the hair loss or slow the hair loss? Is there a proven treatment that works? Or is this just how it’s going to be?
And if my hair is going to thin so much that it becomes a problem for me, will I want to look into wigs again?
I also wonder if my hair loss worries would disappear if I switched back to a pixie cut. I have a lot of experience with pixie cuts, and I know that when my hair is so short, there is no hair that shows up in the shower drain. It just washes away. If I couldn’t see the very obvious evidence of the hair loss in the drain, would my brain feel like the hair loss had stopped? That my hair was stable again?
Anyway. These are the vital questions on my mind in January 2023. : )
I’d love to hear: Do you have wig experience? Are you part of a culture where wigs are common? Have you ever watched a wig video on youtube? If you’ve experienced hair-thinning or hair loss, and resolved it, what would you advise someone like me?
International & Foreign Language Editions of Ejaculate Responsibly
One of the most frequent questions I hear is from readers asking if the book will be translated into their native language. They want to share it with their community and need it to be accessible language-wise. Well, I’ve got a fun update on this topic, and I thought you might like to hear how all of this works.
My publisher, Workman, owns the language rights to the book. So, if you are a publisher in Norway, and you want to publish Ejaculate Responsibly in Norwegian, then you would reach out to Workman and purchase the rights to translate the book into Norwegian and sell it in Norway. Once you’ve secured those rights, you typically have 18 months to publish the new edition of the book, but most publishers like to publish as quickly as possible.
The places that have a publisher who has secured language rights for Ejaculate Responsibly so far:
-Italy
-Brazil
-Spain (I’m told this version will also be sold in Argentina)
-Japan
-Portugal
-Germany
-UK (I’m told this will be an international version, to be sold in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa)
Seven new editions so far! Isn’t that amazing? I’m so over the moon about this I can hardly stand it.
What’s next on my location/language wishlist? France, of course! It would be so wonderful to be able to share the book with my local friends here. I’m crossing my fingers a French publisher will decide to secure the rights asap.
As they prep the new edition of the book, publishers can make tweaks and changes. Some publishers change the cover design to better appeal to their audience. Sometimes the title gets changed because the translation doesn’t make sense or sounds weird.
It’s all very exciting and I can’t wait to see these new editions come to be. And yes, as soon as each edition is ready for pre-order, I’ll be sure to announce it and share a link.
That’s all for now. Feel free to comment on anything I mentioned above, or whatever’s on your mind. I hope you’re having a start to the New Year. Oh, and if you’d like to see more images from the 2009 and 2019 Central Park photoshoots, you can find them all on my blog.
kisses,
Gabrielle
This is a terrific post. I wear a wig every day. I have progressive alopecia and am 51. I am pleased to say I have never had such beautiful hair in my life! Lovely wigs are an investment and quite expensive, but so worthy.
Your pixie cut is darling, I vote you go back to it!