Scrunchies: An IWSG Post

Have you heard? They're back!!

scrunchies!!

Okay, okay, for all you dudes and peeps who don't know what the heck I'm talking about, a scrunchie is a hair band. But not just any hair band. It's a big, wide, cloth hair band that can come in an assortment of colors and patterns. Wear them in your hair. On your wrist. Wear two or three. The choices are yours. They're handy, they're dandy, and I loved them.

I loved them so much, I'd make my own so I could match one to every outfit, holiday, and occasion. And they weren't just fun- they were practical too. I have really thick hair and regular hair bands often break or I have to use two or three to hold all my hair. I could make a scrunchie with elastic from the sewing aisle and my hair would stay trapped high and perky all day long.

Okay, that's all swell and good, you say. But what do scrunchies have to do with the writerly insecurities and the writing life?

Well, here's the thing: sometime during the 90's, Glamour Magazine, with their obnoxious use of the black bar, prompted me to toss out all of my scrunchies. *Again, for the dudes and the practical-thinking-unfashion-obsessed peeps, Glamour has a page in their beauty magazine where they make fun of fashion faux pas placing black bars over people's faces to protect their identity while they rip away at their outfits. 

In a nutshell, Glamour said I was way uncool if I was still wearing scrunchies.

It hurt. I LOVED them. I really did. But I didn't want to be a fashion disaster, so I succumbed to the prodding of the rude fashion columnists poking fun at me from their steel castles along the Hudson River.


Now, scrunchies are back in fashion again. (We won't get into the logic of fashion- why is something hilariously ugly one year then fashionable another? If something is awful, shouldn't it always be awful?) So, what lessons does the scrunchie tale teach the insecure writer?

1. Don't even try to follow trends. They make no sense and they are arbitrary. You could spend your whole life writing and tossing what is rapidly going in and out of fashion.
2. Identify your style and embrace it. If you love it, make it work.
3. Ignore the taunts from the "fashionable" crowd. They wouldn't be throwing stones if they didn't worry about who was crawling up from the bottom.
4. Scrunchies look great with sweat pants or leggings.

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The Question of the month...

Bonus points added to your cool nerd factor if you get this. 

Other than the obvious holiday traditions, have you ever included any personal or family traditions/customs in your stories? 

Off the top of my head, I'm going to say no, but I bet I have and I just can't think of anything. Our traditions and customs become so much a part of who we are, I think a lot of times they show up in our books without us even realizing it. 

Thanks to the IWSG team, our fearless leader and to this month's awesome co-hosts: Jacqui Murray, Lisa Buie-Collard, Sarah Foster, Natalie Aguirre, and Shannon Lawrence for making this day of support possible. 

Don't forget to follow the IWSG on Instagram and we're also a Facebook group.

You can also join the IWSG Book Club on Good Reads for polls, freebies, book chats, and fun. 
This month there are two books to choose from: Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold or Chill Factor by Sandra Brown. The discussion day for these books will be March 25th.

Don't forget the WEP Challenge!