Molly - French Braid
I can enumerate dozens of reaons why I am not a good girl but I really only need one: I still can't put my hair neatly into a french braid. You can start closer to the crown of your head, you can pull the first layer to the middle back, but a good french braid is symmetrical and secure. If you have longish hair and have never worn a french braid, it really does have my vote for most all-purposefully useful hairstyle. It's attractive but not fussy or sexy (by this I mean it's not a hairstyle you would see much on, like, Love Island. It's sexy in that you can eroticize associations with it, like an equestrienne, a Good Wife, Wise Mother, etc) It holds much better than a regular braid and stands up to activity from daily tasks to high impact cardio. It doesn't create problems when you lie flat on your back so it's perfect for pilates and other girly exercises. It signals femininity coupled with a willingness to be industrious and practical. Its only rival might be the ballet bun, but that fails if you have to wear a hat. Plenty of good girl activities, like gardening or not getting sunburned, can and possibly should be done with a big floppy hat.
My mom, while strikingly beautiful, has always identified her style and bearing as boyish. She has chin-length hair and never learned to do updos on either herself or others. The only time I've had nice braids are the occassions my grandmother or another (better) girl has done it for me. I'm a lot better than I used to be, but it's always askew or lumpy. I definitely can't do it without a comb or brush.
I should have made better decisions with men, applied myself more in college, gone to a better college, applied myself more in high school, focused harder on ballet and tap in adolescence, been a quieter and more self-restrained child, but before all that I should have gotten good at french braiding my hair in elementary school. Like the style itself, at this point the ruinous flaw is somewhere at the beginning or middle and most of it needs to be unthreaded to be fixed.