Fashion being the boss, the worst thing that can happen is the hairdo is last season’s. Or even those poor souls who are sporting a hairdo that’s recognizable as something from a previous decade, OOOFFF!!

When we are young, very young, our mother decided what we should do with our hair and then she did it. Longer hair was either braided or put in a ponytail. Short hair always seemed to have bangs. I don’t remember if my mother really used a bowl to trim it, but it sure did look that way. There was a girl in my third grade class who had beautiful, wavy black hair. It hung to her waist and always had some sort of bow or pretty barrette in it. Was she conceited? Yes. Did she always flash the draperies of hair when she was called on? Yes. Did the rest of the girls in the class, with braids or bowl haircuts hate her? Yes, we did. Completely and unequivocally. When the mommas got together at Brownies or other stuff like that, Margaret’s hair was always a topic of conversation. They would say things to her mom like; “It must take you a day to wash and comb it. It looks so pretty though, it’s worth the time.” Margaret was always chosen to play an angel in the Christmas play. She flaunted that hair like a flag. We said things to her that were cruel even for children, who are known for their cruelty. “AAAYYYY!!!, here comes Margaret’s hair! Be careful it might suck you in and you’ll choke to death on it!!!!!” That was my first experience with ‘Hair Awareness’.

I had that hair color fondly referred to as ” mouse brown”. I remember wondering what mouse had started the trend and what color she had dyed it when she was old enough to do that. In the summer it would get a little lighter, never light enough to be blonde, but the mouse got paler. In fifth grade, I started to push the magazine ads to my mom’s attention. The one’s that talked about a ‘Toni Home Permanent”. They showed pictures of little girls that looked like dolls. Heads full of curls, big smiles, bright, shiny eyes and you could just tell that the hair was not “Mouse Brown”. My mother was not someone who was happy doing hair with out a bowl so my aunt volunteered.

I felt like a movie star. Sitting in the kitchen chair and several books to raise me up to a workable level, swathed in an old oilskin tablecloth. I didn’t even make a lot of misery when the shampoo got in my eyes. I had heard about “Suffering for Beauty”. I sat there like Cleopatra even when the rotten egg smell of the permanent lotion wafted throughout the neighborhood. I had gone with my mother when she had a permanent done in the beauty parlor and there was some scary stuff happening there. At some point, she would be attached to a machine that hung down from the ceiling with a lot of wires going to her head.

I don’t think I had seen the movie, “Bride of Frankenstein” yet, but I did recognize a horror film set when I saw it. The good thing about “Toni” was no wires and no ‘Beauty Operator’ was required to do it. My aunt even gave me a manicure while we waited for the magic to work. (that consisted of scraping the black crud from under my fingernails, soaking them in Fels-Naptha, brushing them with what felt like a wire brush and putting a coat of clear polish on. This was my day of beauty and I reveled in it. Until the whole job was finished. I looked in the mirror expecting to see Lana Turner. She must’ve been out to lunch because what I saw looked more like Bozo the Clown. They fiddled and fumphered with it and I still looked like a junior Medusa. Mommy? Where’s the haircut bowl?

They say girls mature faster than boys, I don’t know about general maturity but ‘Hair Awareness’ is an early sign of pre-adolescence running amok. I tried any and all types of hair curling. We had an old-fashioned hair curler that had to be heated on the stove. The kitchen was filled with the smell of incinerated hair. I had found a way to give instant split ends! I had more fuzzy than curly but at least it wasn’t straight and flat. My mom had never liked using it and she managed to make it disappear after one time too many of hair frying. She introduced me to rag curlers. The hair was just long enough to be able to use that method. Mom showed me how it was done, you tied the end of the hair chunks in a piece of rag, and then you rolled up the rag to the scalp and tied it there. If you do it when the hair is wet, it takes almost a full day for it to dry. I didn’t want to stay in on a beautiful day for bike riding, but I didn’t want any one to see me with a head full of rag strips. I sacrificed for the sake of beauty and I stayed in, being as obnoxious as only a 12 year old can, and that is pretty damn obnoxious!!

The next morning, the great unveiling! I had slept poorly through the night. It felt like I was laying in a bed full of lumpy animals who kept pulling at my hair. I untied the rag strips without making myself totally bald. I fluffed up and then got the hairbrush and approached the mirror. OH----MY----GOD!!!! I had a head full of Z’s! ZZZZZZZZZZ Seems that unless you are really careful about where you tie the strips and where you roll up to the scalp, this is what happens. Lana Turner didn’t get to school that day, neither did Bozo the Clown. I went to school with a soaking wet head and a ponytail that looked like a shaving brush. I tried it a few more times with very limited success. Someone had told me that the type of fabric used for the strips was the secret. I went through the linen closet and decided that the pillow case from my mother’s best set of percale sheets was the perfect solution. She never did use them much. I didn’t open my mouth when she went to put them on and couldn’t find the other pillowcase. She blamed the laundry for losing it. These were the only sheets she sent to the laundry and she only put them on her bed maybe twice a year. Discretion is the heart of valor.

If you think that by 13 the hair obsession is waning, you are either a man or a woman who lived in a very isolated area. (My bet is even if you only had parents, goats and chickens and maybe a horse or two, if you are a girl, you did the hair thing.) I am now sporting a ‘Do’ called a D.A., short for duck’s ass. This was started by the guys but the girls picked up on it too. It is short but that doesn’t mean easy. You can get creative with the top because the sides and back are swept into the configuration of meeting in a line at the back of the head. Kind of how a duck would look if it was walking away from you. Hair Spray is now in the picture. In a can, not like the rubber bulb topped with a glass thingy like your mom had. That was called lacquer and you probably could have used it for body work on a car. My mom and my aunts only went to get the hair done once a week. With enough lacquer on it, it must have been like wearing a football helmet. They could stand in a tornado and never a hair out of place! I could ‘do’ my hair in record time now…. Under a hour! Now my thoughts went to the next level-------COLOR!!!

I had heard of the term, “Bottle Blonde” usually when someone was describing a lady who was a little----Uh---Flamboyant? Bleached blondes didn’t talk about how they got blonde. One of the girls in the neighborhood turned blonde in the course of a summer. When questioned, (and you better believe she was!) She would say; “I was in the sun a lot and I think the pool water made it lighter.” No one asked “What pool?” We all went to the same pool in Linden and Judy was the only one who turned blonde. Her hair was almost the same shade of ‘Mouse’ as mine, now it was “Goldilocks”. I must have been swimming in the wrong end of the pool. We were sharing a stolen cigarette one day when she confessed. A friend of her mother’s was a beautician and she had put a special kind of peroxide on her hair until it was blonde. She was almost 15 so her mother had let her do it. This way, it was done right and her hair looked so gorgeous no one could criticize it. I had the bug now! I was sure that blondes DO have more fun! I know that ‘Mouse Brown’ didn’t do a whole lot. Now,,,,,,How do I get this past mom?

I knew my mom didn’t do anything to her hair in terms of color. She was ‘Mouse Brown’ too. One of my aunts had beautiful blonde hair, but she had the same color in her baby pictures. I didn’t detect bottle in her hair. My Aunt Peg had black hair. Really BLACK. Her baby pictures didn’t show hair that black. I asked my mom, “Does Aunt Peg dye her hair?” The reaction was the same as if I had asked, “Is Aunt Peg a drunken floozy?” “ Absolutely NOT! Why would you ask that?” So I said, “When she goes to the beauty parlor, her hair is always much darker when she comes home.” My mom responds; “No, she doesn’t DYE her hair. She just gets----uh----HIGHLIGHTS!” OOOOOOOOOKAY! Highlights? Is that what you call hair dye these days? “Hey Mom? Can I get highlights? Blonde ones?” She must have heard me say, “Hey Mom? Can I be a prostitute?” She vigorously barked, “You CANNOT! You are too young to even think about that sort of nonsense! Do not even bring that subject up again!” On to plan B…….!

There was the stuff I saw in the magazines. It was called, “Sun-In” and it came in a spray bottle and the instructions said to spray it on dry hair and stay out in the sun to dry it. It was supposed to “Gradually lighten hair with each application.” The time was perfect. We were going to the shore for a week so I could sit on the beach and the stuff could dry in my hair. I would return home a BLONDE!!! And when anybody asked me, I would say, “I was in the water a lot and the sun must have turned it blonde.” It worked for Judy.

Day one- Take my little spray bottle to the beach. Sit close to the jetty so my parents won’t notice me spraying the stuff on my head. Let it cook and go gradually BLONDE!

Day two- Beg parents for money. I used the whole damn bottle yesterday and It’s not blonde yet. Tell them I want to buy suntan lotion. I whinge and carry on like I always do. Ka-Ching!$$$. To the drugstore, buy TWO bottles of it. (I don’t want to run short again.) Go to beach, resume spraying.

Day three- It’s RAINING!!! Oh NO! I don’t even want to go to the movies because what if the sun comes out while I’m in there? Become obnoxious for the rest of the day.

Day four- AHA! Sunshine, warm breezes! YES< YES< YES! To the beach! It’s a good thing I don’t sunburn or I’d be purple by now.

Day five- In the bathroom, I stare at my hair. Is it any lighter, at all? I haven’t washed it because I don’t want to lose any of the magic spray. It says it will continue to work even after it dries. Better not take a chance and wash it.

It does look just a bit lighter. Not the platinum I was hoping for, but it is lighter.

Day six- Beach, spray, cook. Spray some more, cook. My mother is looking at me strangely now. “ Why aren’t you in the water? You haven’t gone in since I got here, is there something wrong?” Oh Great! She noticed me, the original water baby, hasn’t ventured in to the waves. “I want to get a good tan mom. That’s why I stay on the beach, getting a tan.” She leans down and looks at my hair. UH-OH. “We are going out to dinner tonight and your hair looks bad. Make sure you wash it and dress up a little.” WOW! I think, that was close! I have lost a lot of faith in this product by now. I am on my sixth bottle and so far, nothing seems to have happened. I’ll wrap my hair in a kerchief tonight so I don’t lose any of the ‘stuff’.

Day seven- I apply my last squirts of “Sun-In”. I see what they mean by gradually. At this rate of about a bottle a day, I should be blonde by next Christmas. I recall hearing something about a ‘peroxide blonde’. I saw a bottle of peroxide in the bathroom-----Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I pour the peroxide on and head for the beach. Going home tonight, still a ‘mouse brown’, A lighter mouse though. Until I finally wash it. The mouse color was from all the sludge you can build up when you don’t wash your sweaty head for a week. Yes, I had achieved blondeness! I may have been the one that gave blonde a reputation for being behind in strategic thinking.

Watch for “The rest of the colors of the rainbow” next time.

NOW. CAN WE GIVE PEACE A FIGHTING CHANCE?