Yesterday, I put down the big bucks to get my hair cut and styled. Well, I say that. A cool guy named Glenn cuts my hair, and he’s actually quite reasonable for 2008 in the over-priced metropolis of Seattle, Washington. He’s also a genius with hair. He’s every bit as anal as I am with my writing, only he uses shears and scissors to create art. And he’s truthful; Glenn will never give you bad advice on hair, not just because he cares about clients, but because he’s the most hair-ethical stylist I’ve ever met. So this time when I went for my appointment, I did two things. I asked him if he thought I could handle straight bangs, and I showed him a picture of me taken almost eighteen years ago with big 80’s hair and enormous, puffy bangs. On the subject of bangs, we agreed that I could handle a certain length and a certain style and that they would be fresh and fun. As to my old photograph, he smiled a genuine smile of nostalgia and asked to show it to the other stylist. He thanked me for sharing it and said it reminded him of old times--good times.
Actually, looking at that picture brought back a flood of hair memories for me too. The different hair fads through the years had a great and sometimes traumatic affect on my life and/or reflected life’s events.
For example, I was born in 1970. The seventies were the decade of ultra-long, ultra-straight hair in America. Teenage girls with curly or wavy hair sometime ironed their hair on the ironing board or rolled it up on empty beer or orange juice cans at night to make it straight. I was only a little girl then, but I was still unfashionable because my hair was VERY curly. It was also red, which compounded the tragedy. Only old women thought my hair was pretty. My own mother was in despair. At around age 3 and 4, she simply kept it cut short as a boy’s because it would not “behave.” After that, she decided to give me a perm to make the curls more “uniform.” The perm solution burned my eyes and made me cry, and I ended up with something that looked like an afro. It was HIDEOUS. After that, she just kept it cut fairly short and tried to brush it into pleasing shapes. Kids called me Bozo, sometimes, and The Jolly Red Giant (I was also a foot taller than the other kids). Kids are so cruel (sigh).
Around age 14, I insisted on letting it grow out. That was 1984, and the seventies straight hair had exploded into what had become the “big hair” decade. As it grew out, I hot-rolled my bangs, sprayed them, then picked them out and puffed them up: repeatedly. Now, this was not odd. EVERYONE had big hair then, or at least big bangs. When spiral perms became the fashion in the late 80’s, I had to have one of those too. Only thing is, there is something terribly wrong with my hair follicles. I learned to my horror that even if you perm both sides of my head with the same size curlers for the same amount of time, one side will curl up an inch more than the other. From then on, the stylist used two different sizes of rollers, and we hid my dirty little secret during the spiral perm years. But the smell of Paul Mitchell hairspray still takes me back to “date nights,” those exciting Friday nights when my sister and I would sit and eat fried chicken and cheese sticks in our gowns with rollers in our bangs, talking about which boys were picking us up and what our plans were.
In college, I picked up the habit of letting all of my hair grow to the same length, with some light layering around the face. That way, it practically styled itself. I didn’t have to blow-dry it, which was good, since too much drying makes curly hair kinky and frizzy. I simply washed it, moussed it, scrunched it, parted it to the left, and let it dry long and curly on its own. My hair doesn’t get very far past my shoulders; too bad, since I had a childhood fantasy of looking like Crystal Gayle with hair down to my toes. But I survived and had a lot of fun. During graduate school, I occasionally had it done in an “up do” for events like the Erotica Poetry Reading. I was rocking that hair like I had rocked those 80’s bangs, dressed up in black leather and looking like a cross between an eighteenth century court refugee and a high-class hooker. Alas, there are bittersweet memories there too. I remember a man I loved helping me take every one of the 40 or so hairpins out of my hair that night; and I remember that he married someone else that next year and broke my heart.
And so . . . . I married a college friend (bad decision) and lopped off my hair. It was 1997 then, and I wanted to be sleek and grown up and NOT brokenhearted. For the first time since childhood, I had short hair. This time, it was a long bob, all one length. I blew it straight and kept on rocking my hair in black velvet cat suits. I was almost emaciated in those few years. I wanted to be long and cool and sleek like a slim cigarette in a silver holder. The only change I made in those years was rasta braids. I spent 8 hours sitting on a plastic bath stool and holding an African woman’s baby while she wove red disco braids into my natural hair. Don’t ever get fake hair! It’s cool in style, but in reality, it’s heavy, it’s hot, and you have to spray it with Afro-Sheen every day to keep it from getting fuzzy. Too . . . much . . . work. I unbraided it after six weeks and became myself again.
After graduate school, I had a few years of marriage, then divorce, then a few years of partying before reality hit me in a big way, and then hair wasn’t a priority for many years. I simply grew it medium long, washed it, air-dried it, and wore it naturally wavy. If it wasn’t standing straight up, I wasn’t worried about it.
Finally, in 2006, I married for the second time, moved to Seattle, met Glenn and cut my hair again. This time an inverted bob, sleek and slightly funky, with sharp points around the face. I love sleek and funky. We even colored it, which was a first for me. I hated red hair as a child because it was “different”; I loved it as an adult for the very same reason. But we kept it red. We just went from my natural auburn to what I call SuperHero Red. Flame Red. Red Sonja Red. I LOVED it, but red dye fades fast, so I was quickly just coppery again.
But about a week ago, I began hankering for new hair again. So for the first time in at least 15 years, I have bangs, only they are sleek and straight, not puffy. Glenn says it’s funny I asked for them because my hair now looks like the hottest style in Japan, which is a copy of an American 1920’s flapper style. I think I look cute. We’re even going to put in red-violet panels next week.
My life and my hair have changed so much. When I was a child, you sat in hairdryers. Women gossiped and drank cokes in glass bottles and read “trashy” articles in Cosmo. No one does that now, and if you even thought about smoking indoors, you’d probably be arrested for indecent conduct. When I was a teenager, your life and your love life revolved around whether or not your hair was picked out or sticking to the back of your head: it certainly doesn’t now. When I was in college, I made my hair my “glory” and the center of my seductiveness: not now. Now I am more “me” than I ever have been. Many things that just don’t matter have fallen away. But I DO have bangs again. Straight ones that almost cover my eyebrows, but not quite. And like I said: I think I look cute.
For more on my writing and English instruction, go to www.linguaespresso.com.
