Hair Do Well

Well, we all have a face

That we hide away forever

And we take them out

And show ourselves when everyone has gone

Some are satin, some are steel

Some are silk and some are leather

They're the faces of a stranger

But we'd love to try them on

I thought I’d taken some really bad pictures in my life, but until I saw the results of Google’s Arts & Culture ‘Find Your Face in a Museum’ exercise, I would never have guessed that my inner vision could be so different than my outer visage.  Don’t get me wrong...there might be a certain cache’ attached to sharing features with Big Bowl, a Crow Chief (Alfred Jacob Miller), Henry Clay (John B. Neagle) and...wait for it….a youngish George Washington (Charles Willson Peale).  If nothing else, I guess I’m an All American, right?

But...can you give me a break?  Barring the self portrait of a tough looking woman with round glasses and a fedora, not a single Google suggestion is female.  Talk about a stranger!

That disillusionment aside, without a doubt my worst feature is my hair.  Long, it tended to lanky if not downright limp.  Short, it had a life of its own, disdaining the force of gravity and tending to head in every direction but down.  

 

As a result of the flaws of what the Bible has called a woman’s “crowning glory”, what I see repeatedly in family photos are not smile lines, or eyeglasses, but unkempt, uncut, or unruly hair.

A classic case..the classic case, as a matter of fact….are our wedding pictures. Here is the bride, there is the groom, and neither one of them has considered what posterity would make of the “HAIR!” of the 1970s:

 

Let it fly in the breeze

And get caught in the trees

Give a home to the fleas in my hair

A home for fleas

A hive for bees

A nest for birds

There ain't no words

For the beauty, the splendor, the wonder

Of my…

HAIR!  But that’s not the full story.  Look at how Blake’s orange shoes clash with his peachy tux.  I mean peachy as in hue, not ‘peachy’ as a term for just fine.  Look at the general level of hirsutitude (yes, that’s a word..it’s on the internet!) among the wedding party both male and female. No wonder the bride and groom and their friends look happy, while the pictures of the grandparents show a level of gravity at best and gloom at worst.

My next worst photos are recorded shortly thereafter, when I tried to distract attention from the effects of impending motherhood by subjecting my poor happy mop of hair to the chemical treatment of a perm.  Obsessively straight hair required excessive amounts of the noxious fluids necessary to make my hair curl; the final hairdo shot right past body and wave into the red zone of  frizz.  

 

And there it remained for the next couple of years while Lee was a babe in arms, learned to walk, and welcomed her new sister Ann.  

Since then, my bad hair days have mostly been converted to bad hat days.  My short coiffeur inevitably becomes a flattop after a day under a Carhartt stocking hat in the winter or a UVA bucket hat or visor in the summer.

 

Not to worry...after forty years of this kind of behavior, I accept keeping my hair “undercover” is the best way to keep myself out of the camera’s eye. There are worse fates than “hat head”!

Hair-do-well

Was I a willing participant in the fads of my childhood?  

Well, I was a latecomer to the Beatles and all of rock 'n roll.  I remember kids talking about the Beatles when I was in grade school,  but until my best friend became obsessed with one of their songs (Come Together?  Hey Jude? After all these years, which song we listened to a thousand times escapes me....), I knew little of the Beatles outside of "She Loves You, Ya, Ya, Ya."

Exhibit A: 

Indeed, I wore bell bottom pants; my mother made me a pair of flowered wide leg pants when I was in junior high...and while I don't know if they made me a fashion plate,  I wore them for my most special occasions...like junior high skating parties...and I loved them.  As far as I know, no photographs exist of this outfit.

Exhibit B: 

Yes, I know the picture above was taken in 1981 when I was not only married, but had two kids.  Never the less, in this shot, I am not yet 25 years old and by modern standards, I would still be on my parents' health insurance, which means I would not be a 'grownup'. 

 So...as I was saying... enter exhibit B: the permanent.  On me.  The baby, girl, teen, and now,  woman, least likely to keep a curl in her hair. And believe me, it wasn't for lack of trying.  I remember waking up one morning as a young girl and finding my hair turned up at the end!  Eureka!  A curl!  The precursor to a pageboy!  Imagine my consternation and disappointment when I looked in the mirror and that upturned tendril turned out to be the result of sleeping too soundly...a truly errant 'wild hair'.   

That ill fated harbinger did not deter me from bucking fate and heredity.  No.  Over time, I used my mother's pink foam curlers, electric rollers, home perms, and finally, the chemically induced frizz produced by hours of stinking saturation under a hair dryer in a beauty parlor.  It was a strange desire for someone born with the uber straight hair featured in any black and white photo of the years I was growing up: whether the ultra individualistic unkempt and unwashed '60s or the 'do your own thing' '70s.  No, it was my fate to faint and pine over the Rococo curls of the 1980s...just as I embarked on the ultimate no frills journey of a housewife and mother....

Ok.  These pictures feature Julianne Moore and Jennifer Gray.  Compare these to the picture of me with two very cute little girls on a North Carolina beach in 1981.  The movie stars showcase the look I visualized.  And the tortured Medusa head in the snapshot is the best attempt man's ingenuity could accomplish with the resistant, recalcitrant pelt that is my hair.  Chalk this attempt up to the rampant hormones of a soon to be mama.  As a triumph of hope over experience...and fashion...my attempts to update my hairstyle...and nature...have to rank up there as exercises in futility.

Hairdo well?  Ne'er do well.