NOTABLE
HAIRDRESSING DISASTERS
There was one spring in
the '80s when I endeavored to stay indoors for six weeks. When forced to venture outside, I wore a capacious hat-the kind worn by
the spies in Mad Magazine's "Spy vs Spy." The reason is already clear to most women reading
this: I was in mourning for my recently-sacrificed
hair.
Had someone attacked me
and shorn my curly auburn locks?
Had I suffered chemotherapy?
The answers are "no" and "thank you, God, no," respectively. Not hardly. I had PAID buco-bucks, muy
dinero, lots of sheckles to have someone visit upon my unsuspecting pate the
worst haircut known to the annals of Midwestern hair cutting history. My "Miguel" was a specimen of
the worst of the species. I merely
sought out a famous hair butcher and opened my purse, saying "do anything
you wish to me and take as much money as you want."
And the worst part of
this tragedy is that I would have had only to wait ten years or so and my own
natural hair would be in style.
Of course, some slight "tweaking," some tiny change, would
have still been necessary to necessitate paying something. One couldn't just go around letting
one's own birth hair wave in the wind. So I got whatever style was in for the "It-Girl"
that season-as I recall, it was asymmetrical, which, had I cut it myself, would
have been called "cut crooked."
And naturally, it was way too short. It is a little appreciated fact that hairdressers, like people who train dogs and skinny
cooks, actually despise their subject matter. Just take a peek at the floor around hairdressers' stations
if you don't believe me. See? Covered with hanks of perfectly good
hair.
Though I never revisited
Miguel, not even to plant a bomb under his chair, only the name changes-be it
Tammi (with an "I" and sometimes a star or a heart to dot it) or
Fiona-each stylist (only sixty-year-old ladies have a right to call them
beauticians) starts off by reducing the patient-client to a basic humiliated
cowering mass. Some lines
guaranteed to take you down to ground zero include: "who CUT this last? Did YOU cut your own hair? Oh my, what PRODUCTS are you using on this?" As if Prell and Lux Liquid aren't good enough
any more. Then they yank
away-without benefit of novacaine for the pitiful hair holder. Balls of half-grey darning floss are
flung into space.
Then they get you in the
shampoo chair, boiling and freezing your scalp and simultaneously removing a
back molar if needed-anything for a better jaw line. Then, they twirl you and
ask a question for the form of it all.
When you answer, as I always do, "I really want a half-inch off is
all," they sniff or snort and
roll their eyes-and immediately take a 2" by 2"-inch swatch out of
the middle top-so that there's nothing for it but to cut the rest of your mop
to match.
When I told him I was
going to write this story, a friend, male in gender, said "there's no
haircut so bad that three days won't cure it." Perhaps. If you happen to use Miracle Gro as a
pomade. Or if you happen to be
male in gender. For the rest of
us, three months just begins to ameliorate the damages. And permanents? And coloring? Do not get me started….Suffice to say that
a friend and I are still hard at work on a sure-fire bestseller: "Surviving the Coming Bad
Perm." I wore khaki-colored hair
long before it was punk to do so-I ironed my hair into a straight isosceles
triangle-I slept (fitfully) with my tresses wrapped and pinned around #5 Orange
Juice cans-all this in pursuit of Mary Travers when I was born a Gilda
Radner. I wore the first White
Afro in my college town-the result of hours of crisscrossed bobby pins every
time I had to wash it. As recently
as last year, I had extensions
built into my hair-and came out with a braided and stacked coif that had
everything but flying buttresses.
Now I know why horses sleep standing up-it's the weight of that
mane. Also, I could have had an extension built on
to my house for less than I paid for somebody else's hair twisted into
mine. For a brief time in
the sixties, I wore a shiny
acrylic "fall" -wore it day and night-until my sisters convinced me
at 4' 7" with 2'
"hair" (I'm using unseen air quotes here) I resembled nothing so much as I did a troll doll.
And for this brand of
larceny, I'm told I must pay
upwards of $27.00 for the cut alone
($50.00 in New York last summer) and everything else, including the
stylists' and colorists' and permists' fees-is extra. I can tell you exactly the answer to that ageless
question:"what price beauty?" Just let me add up these credit card
receipts!!
- by
Norma Gay Prewett (aka Gay Davidson-Zielske)
This is Norma Gay
Prewett, who will reenter the
outside world in about three months.