It’s a Hair Thing

This is just a guess, but I think there are probably less than a dozen women who don’t fret about their hair.  Color, style, length, curly, not curly...the list goes on.

My own hair concerns started when I was about 7 or 8.  That’s when my mom pulled out the probably dull scissors to “trim” my bangs.  Well...after the first snip or two they weren’t even.  Grandma joined in the fun.  No improvement.  Mom took another whack at them. Turns out I was sporting bangs about 1/4 inch long.  I was the only girl in third grade wearing a nun’s habit.  By the way it takes several weeks for bangs to grow out.

That, however, was not my last really bad hair experience.  Back in the 70s I wanted to get my hair all wonderful for a trip to Mexico.  Puerto Vallarta.  Big event for me and my hairdo.  So I scheduled a beauty shop permanent.  A home permanent would just not do for this occasion.  The end result was the biggest mess of frizzed hair you could imagine.  Short of shaving my head the only fix was a wig.  Needless to say, I didn’t spend a lot of time in the pool on this vacation.  

So, who remembers the torture of brush rollers?  Back in the day they replaced pin curls which were created by your mom wrapping your locks around her finger and then jabbing a bobby pin into your scalp repeatedly.  My mom always said, “It’s ok.  They’ll loosen.”  Yeah, right.  My friend, Janet, had to endure ringlets (the Shirley Temple look).  Her mom wet her hair down with sugar water to create the ringlets.  The ringlets lasted about 27 minutes after the bobby pins were removed.  In the meantime she attracted bees and other flying insects.

Then we advanced to another form of torture.  Curling irons.  They were a multi-purpose tool.  You could burn yourself or someone else. And if you needed to start a fire you could just plug one in.  

There is the hunt for the perfect shampoo, conditioner to make your hair soft, gel to make your hair stiff, oil treatment, color, and devices to make your hair either straight or curly.  It seems if you have straight hair you want it curly.  If you happen to have curly hair you want it straight.  I don’t know.  Could that be a law of physics?  For every action there is a reaction kind of thing?

Speaking of color.....hair color, that is.  Only 1-2% of the world population is a natural redhead.  If you happen to be of English descent make that 4%, Scottish - 6 %, Irish, you can go to the head of the class with 10%.  That being the case 0% of the population has royal blue, purple or green hair, but you can buy hair color for these and a lot of other hair colors.  Remember in the 60's the lavender hair ladies?  Did they use food coloring?  Many of them had the aroma of Evening in Paris cologne about them as well.

While I’m ranting about hair color I should point out that men can get a product called “Just for Men” to color their greying beards.  Here’s a crazy thought! Shave it off, if you don’t like to reveal that you’re aging.

So I’m off to fix my hair for an evening of fun and hopefully no wind to mess it up.