Saving face

So this Weight Watchers thing is working and my face is starting to show it.

To celebrate, I got new glasses: wide, rectangular ones - red, with a swooping silver architectural accent at the sides.
It's also time for a new haircut, so I had a consultation with a stylist. The topics ranged from bangs to color to growing out strategies. Scintillating stuff, I tell you. But I've had the same damn cut, in varying permutations, since 2006. I hoped to walk away from the consult with direction - a change to look forward to based on professional direction. But alas, it's still up to me.

So I searched online... for bangs, for bangs with glasses, for side swept bangs and swooping bangs. For fringe bangs and blunt bangs, even hipster bangs.

The question they all posed was the same, "What shape is your face?"
I don't know.
Face-shaped, I guess.

Square.

I measured.
It's SQUARE.

But... I'm in good company.
Kristin Scott Thomas.
Isabella Rossellini.
Jodie Foster.
We of wide, angular jaws and broad foreheads.

And I have a fabulous forehead (all the better for protecting my amazing pre-frontal cortex).
Can I really make a case for covering it up with bangs?
No lines to speak of (yet). No cystic acne scars.
Just a vast, clear plane of lily-white smoothness. And I say this with such poetic fervor because I am only now realizing the worth of such a feature.

But I also know the worth and power that comes from drastic external change. Given the breadth and depth of the mental and emotional changes I experienced 2010, it's fitting that I find a way to present them to the world.

I spilled into 2010 as an almost amorphous thing, my edges blurring into the people and world around me. But I've since laid out stricter perimeters, gained edges, and know absolutely where I end and others begin.

So. How do I translate that into a haircut...?

A pretty good week overall...

I finished the lion's share of the Urban Mandarin Sweater.

It's been a hell of a slog... through Spring's upset, Summer's uncertainty, Autumn's changes and now that Winter is settling in, I'm eager to face 2011 with a sweater born of persistence and patience.

And even a little destruction. See, you have to steek it, or cut it, before you finish it.
Scary business, steeking.


In other news, I weighed in today and learned I was a mere 3 oz short of my first goal - losing 5% of my starting body weight. I won't share what that actually was (a lady has to keep some things to herself).

To wrap up, this week there is 5% less of me, but at least 5% more of the sweater.
And I think that's an excellent trade off.