Hair

HAIR

When I was a little girl I wore my hair in a ponytail, pulled straight back. It was fine and tangled easily. I have memories of standing on the floor radiator on cold mornings, with my mother right behind me pulling out the tangles with a comb. It was SO painful! The austere ponytail effect made me all freckled face and ears. Sometimes I wore a bow on top of my head and looked really silly. My mother would put rollers in my pony tail to make it look curly. The rollers were long and green – sort of like asparagus and looped back into themselves – strange! All those years with the pony tail took their toll. There is a flat space on the back of my head – REALLY!

At about age 14, I got my hair cut short. My mother insisted and I reluctantly went along. Life was never the same. Then I started to have permanents that seemed to take forever and then my hair usually looked frizzy. The frizzy hair, accompanied by teenage pimples, and makeup that was too dark – well, I didn’t look very good.

In those teenage years, hair rollers were a fact of life. I had to roll up my hair every night. At first there were brush rollers that attached with pink plastic pins about 3 inches long. I would wake up every morning with a sore head and a mark in the middle of my forehead from a roller pin. But all the girls had the same mark, so it was OK.

Then they invented Dippity-Do, the first gel and by using this gel I was able to switch over to smooth rollers. These attached with horizontal clips. They didn’t stay in as well, but they didn’t hurt like the brush rollers.
The idea was to get the hair stiff and curly enough that you could tease it to get that pouffy look so popular in the mid-60s. Of course, once you curled it, teased it and combed it out, you then sprayed it. Aqua Net was a mainstay of teenage life, later supplanted by Just Wonderful! Sometimes we wore little bows on clips.

Speaking of hairspray, I had this roommate in college who was a moocher of the first order (she was assigned to me courtesy of the college). And she dated a LOT of guys – including the football team (if you get my drift). She didn’t go to class and she mostly worried about her hair. She was always using my hairspray. I set her up! I bought a brand in a large can with a paper label. After she got accustomed to using it, I removed the label and put the label on my spray starch. She had a HOT date that night with a football star. She rolled her hair, sprayed it with spray starch, and the results weren’t pretty. Talk about a “flip” gone wild!

With the aid of a hair dryer, it was possible to not sleep in rollers. Our first hairdryer was a model that sat on the table and resembled a modern-day hairdryer. That soon gave way to the bag dryer. This model featured a large plastic bag, a long hose, and a small round unit you could wear over your shoulder. Finally, by college, they had invented the dome shaped kind that sat on the table and you felt like you were at the beauty shop. These were portable and ubiquitous in my college dorm.

From about the time I was 15 to my early 20s I often had my hair “frosted.” I thought it made me look cool. Frosting was very painful, as they put a tightly fitting plastic cap on your head and pulled through the strands of hair with a crochet hook. Those strands got colored blonde. Then each time, to keep the blonde looking good, I used the same purple stuff that little old ladies used to keep their hair looking white (not yellow).

About the time our son was born in 1971 I let my hair grow long for the first time. Yes, I wore it parted in the middle and flopped behind my ears. It looked OK I guess, but was definitely too much trouble and didn’t last long.

In about 1972, I discovered blow drying and life was good again. I kept my hair cut short and I blew it dry. It didn’t look very good, but it was easy!

As the years went by, I started to notice a little gray creeping into my hair until one morning a few years ago I looked in the mirror and found it was more gray than brown. Hmmh.. how did that happen? I like it in a way because it looks a lot like it did when I used to have it frosted. These days I use “blonde” shampoo and mousse, as that makes it look more white than yellow -- just like when I was a teenager.

So, my hair looks sort of frosted(at least I kid myself into thinking that -- really it looks gray) and I don’t have rollers or permanents. All I have to do is wash it, spray in some mousse and blow dry it. And I have to have it cut every three weeks! But it could be a lot worse, and definitely has been. Will I have it dyed --- never – why complicate my life?