My Monstrous Miller Hair

I love to do genealogy. I especially enjoy seeing photos of my ancestors to see how they looked when they were younger. 

However, I don’t have to look at photos of my ancestors to see them; all I have to do is look in my mirror—I can see my ancestors’ in my horrible hair. For I have the “Horrible Hansen Hair.”

My Mother and her naturally curly hair

As far back as I can remember, I was cursed with the “Horrible Hansen Hair!” 

Technically it isn’t Hansen Hair—it is Miller Hair as it is from my father’s mother’s Miller side of the family. 

My mother on the other hand, had beautiful, thick, naturally curly hair; while mine was thin, fine and absolutely straight. I can recall my mother trying to do something with my hair, but it defied all her efforts to train it. So she would end up braiding it. Then she would look at my father and say, “She has your mother’s Miller hair.” 

For my father’s mother was a Miller from Southern Utah. They were very proud of their heritage as pioneers who had been the first teachers, school superintendents, and educated people in the area where my father grew up. And they let everyone know about it.   But they also had the finest, thinnest, wimpiest hair in the West. And it started to recede from a man’s hairline when he turned 21-years-old.

There was nothing that could be done with the “Miller Hair” as my mother discovered. She took me to her sister, who was a beautician, but it wouldn’t take a perm very well, and then it frizzed instead. If you managed to curl it by sleeping all night on curlers, they immediately drooped and fell out. My mother finally gave up and I lived with braids for years.

My Grandmother Hansen

My Grandmother Hansen (from whose Miller blood I inherited the monstrous hair from) had hair that was thin, but she worked hard to keep it looking good. She was a very elegant lady, who dressed to the nines, and she wouldn’t be caught dead with her hair not dressed perfectly. All I had to do was look at her sisters with their thinning, fly-away unkempt hair to know what mine would look like if I didn’t work as hard as my grandmother.

 I am pretty sure my grandmother went to a beautician regularly, just because of who she was—a proud Miller, the captain of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers chapter, and very involved in town life.

By the time I was a teenager, I had decided that perms and short hair were the only way for me to go (long straight hair was not popular then). I couldn’t afford to go to a beautician to get a perm so I’d buy a perm and have my sister, mother, friend, or anyone I could to give it to me. Even when I married and Ed had to go into the military and we were living on air and dreams, I told him that perms had to be budgeted in; I couldn’t live without them, even if I had to give them to myself. 

All my life I’ve fought with my hair—with perms and keeping it short, and cursing it. All I had to do was look at my dad with his balding thin hair, and it would remind me what my hair was like and I’d go get another perm. I tried various hairstyles, but I had a round face, so I needed height on top, so leaving it long and straight or pulling it back into a ponytail just didn’t seem an option.

My straight-haired daughter and granddaughters

 Out of my five children, only one of my children, (unfortunately a daughter) inherited my hair, but long straight hair is popular, so she just goes with it. It has more body than mine, and she can do more with it than I could, so she doesn’t stress about it. Both of her daughters inherited it, (de ja vu), but they keep in long and trimmed nicely. None of my sons inherited my father’s baldness (thank goodness).

My mother's mother--Grandmother Hendrickson

My mother’s mother, my Grandmother Hendrickson, had thick hair, but I don’t know if it was straight or curly, as she died when I was about six years old. But I do know that in every photo I have of her, her hair never turned gray. It stayed glossy and dark even to her death in her sixties. That gave me hope that maybe I wouldn’t go gray early, either. (My mother died at 48 years old, so I didn’t know if her hair would have turned gray or not.) 

But I began to hope. Maybe if I had one bad hair gene, I’d be compensated with one good hair gene. And it worked. Here I am almost 70 years old, and I have very few gray hairs. My hair isn’t dark so the gray doesn’t show up. 

Maybe there is some justice in life’s genetic hair lottery after all.