(originally written for my Creative Nonfiction class at Stanford University’s Writer’s Studio course)
I walked down the asphalt street in front of my house, the sun a hot dot in the sky that warmed my back and threw a shadow that ran from my toes along the ground, away from me like a long dark clothespin topped with a fuzzy cotton ball. Bouncing up and down on my bare feet made the mushroom float up and drift down like dandelion fluff. I was unable to run from it. I argued with it, told it to stop copying me, stop following me. I hated looking at it.
Growing up in the humidity of Miami during the Brady Bunch-obsessed 70’s, I felt like a frizzy-headed freak. I wasn’t alone; many of my friends had the same problem, and some wore a triangle-folded cloth bandanna over the frizzy evidence daily. I imagine a psychologist, specializing in hair trauma, would have a line out the door and down the street today. Having hair that was anything but “Marsha Brady”, long, straight, shiny, swingy, and blonde–was a curse that would land you at the bottom of the middle school social ladder. It would certainly never land you a highly desired spot on the cheerleading squad, or get you elected class president. And when a boy, whom I had a crush on, suggested that if I just cut off the dry, straw-like top part, the rest of my hair might look pretty, he crushed me as well. I was convinced that this hair of mine was ruining my life. It’s a wonder I didn’t just wear a hat every day till my high school graduation. And it doesn’t take a genius to figure that I’d wind up a hairdresser after all the early practice I got trying to cure this hair curse, which I’ve since come to accept.
Of course, today we have smoothing shampoos, conditioners, gels, pomades, straightening creams and lotions, a whole industry devoted to making the merely wavy, cruelly curly or “fried & ‘fro-ish” hair manageable and bearable. Back in 1976, our product choices were few: Hair So New, Dippity-Doo, or Pink Hair Tape.
Hair So New was basically a spray-in detangler, which made combing through wet hair after shampooing easier. The steps were easy to follow: get out of the shower, towel-dry the hair, spray Hair So New throughout the wet lengths, comb through, and let dry. Hair So New might have created a greasy look, and stayed wet for hours, but who cared? IT CUT DOWN THE FRIZZ! It didn’t do the trick for me. It had its uses for someone else though, as I found out quite by accident.
On the top of the Hair So New bottle was a little dime-sized plastic slug that was attached to the top of the pump, preventing the product from being sprayed prior to purchase. One day, at the 5 and 10-cent store, I saw an older kid twist that slug and snap it off the Hair So New bottle. He jammed the plastic slug into the coin slot on a 10-cent super ball machine, and it got stuck in there. He turned the dispensing key around and around, and the balls just kept rolling out. He had a brown paper shopping bag under the chute, and he just filled up the whole bag, emptying the machine’s glass jar. No one in the store was paying much attention to him, but I watched the whole thing. When he turned around and saw me looking, he invited me to pick out my favorite super ball from the bag of slippery, shiny orbs, to keep me from being a tattletale, I suspect.
The amorphously gelatinous Dippity-Doo gel, invented in 1965, had been around since I was just a few years old. This translucent gel, in its original pink or extra-hold green formula, shimmering in its clear plastic cylindrical jar, studded with air-bubble diamonds, was the quintessential goop used to force hair into hundreds of shapes and styles. Originally used to coat the hair of women my mother’s age before the hair was wound onto plastic rollers, then blasted with the dragon’s breath of the hooded hairdryer, Dippity-Doo dried to a hard, shiny finish, which would then need to be brushed out and muscled into a style that would hold for a whole week before washing and doing it all over again. I only used it to tame my wayward and wiry strands into smoothly braided pigtails, to coax each plaited loop to arch and dive into the next, without the interruption of any dry sprouts of fluffy hair. I preferred the pink color. Boys didn’t use gel back then. In the late 1970’s, the boys my age wore their hair long enough to cover their ears and their shirt collars, and they wore it as frizzy as they wanted. Obviously the social hair rules weren’t the same between the genders. Why a boy’s frizzy mop was more acceptable than a girl’s was a mystery to me. But the captain of the football team had frizzy hair. The homecoming princess did not.
Pink Hair Tape exists mainly in the memories of the baby boomer set and has attained urban legend status, as if it was never real. ”Are you serious?” the youngsters say, “There really was such a thing?” as if to really mean, “Who the heck would buy that?” But buy it we did. Pink Hair Tape was a fun way to make hair “sit, stay, good hair”. This paper-based tape was dispensed on a roll, just like Scotch tape, and was probably the precursor to the Post-it note adhesive. It was just about that sticky. The long sides of the tape were edged with a zigzag pattern, to make it easier to get your fingernail underneath to peel it off. Using it was a ritual in itself. The concept was to apply Dippity-Do to your bangs, comb them flat against your forehead, Pink-hair-tape-them down, sit under a bonnet-style hairdryer till the formerly unruly hair was dry; peel away the tape, and “Voila!” flat, obedient bangs. I was also able to use Pink Hair Tape to create head-hugging, prom-night pin curls, perfectly swirled just in front of my red, dryer-burned ears. The most extensive use of Pink Hair Tape for me was during the “wrapping” phase of my hair straightening attempts.
This was a complicated process, and I’d have to enlist the help of a steady-handed friend to use the clothes iron to smooth out my crinkly curls while I was bent over the ironing board, my shoulder-length hair laid across its length. Many is the time I sported a nasty burn on my ear or neck from the hot iron, so when I say steady hands, I really mean it. Once my hair was hot and straight, I’d start wrapping sections of hair around my head, usually counter-clockwise for some odd reason, using my head like a giant roller. Once wrapped, I’d use the pink hair tape to secure it at all skin contact points, and use small, silver metal hair clips to keep the ends flat and in place. This whole architectural triumph was then carefully swathed in a turban of toilet tissue, captured with more clips, and I would finally, gently lay my head on the pillow and try to sleep. I even tried to sleep sitting up, the first few attempts. I wish I had a photo. Thinking back on the amount of time and effort expended, it’s a wonder I ever got a wink of sleep. (I also had a thing I would do that involved winding my hair around empty orange juice cans, but I’ll leave that for another story.) I went to a lot of effort to look like I did nothing at all.
The Olympic skater Dorothy Hamill sparked a style frenzy: a straight, shiny, swingy cap of hair that flew out from her head like an upside-down bell when she did the ice-skating spins. I wanted that hair so bad, I begged my mother for a round brush and an orange MAX handheld hairdryer that I could dry my hair straight with. I would roll sheet-like sections of my fluffy hair around a round, boar-bristle brush and follow the brush with the hot air stream from the handheld dryer as I dragged the brush through my shoulder-length hair. The obstruction of the thick hair, combined with the large brush, sometimes blocked the air intake, making the dryer overheat. Sometimes I just had to wait till the dryer had cooled down enough to turn back on, and other times I actually blew the electrical circuit. (I learned where the electrical panel was at an early age and reset the breakers myself when this happened) This of course took me almost 2 hours in the morning. I jumped on my bike and rode to school, feeling my alter ego’s hair stream back from my head and softly tickle my back. It swayed, it shone, and it was my glory, at least until Phys Ed, when the heat and humidity tracked me down and once again, a field of dead grass crowned my head. I would refuse to go to any swim parties unless I could disappear into a bathroom with my MAX blow dryer and my round brush for an hour, or slap a bandanna over it. I just couldn’t face anyone with that frizzy mess.
When I was 12, my mother took me to a real beauty salon, and a lady hairstylist cut my hair in a new style called The Shag. Then, she showed me how to use heated rollers to get rounded, soft curls that lay in staggered layers from the top of my head to the top of my shoulders. It was smooth, it looked pretty. I felt pretty.
I begged my mother for a set of heated rollers. It took 3 weeks of my allowance, but I finally had my very own plastic case of Clairol Hairsetters. Getting ready for school would now only take 30 minutes of hair work instead of an hour of ironing and wrapping, and sleepless nights wrapped in toilet paper and pink hair tape. I loved it, and started to experiment with putting the rollers in different directions, or mixing up the small and larger ones in different locations on the head. The bangs could go straight down, or sweep over to one side, I could part my hair in the middle or on the side–I was having fun! I was learning to control my hair, instead of it controlling me. Even when my clothespin shadow showed up, the mushroom was replaced by a cascade of ripples.
Right about that time, the Poodle Perm came into fashion. And my straight-haired classmates flocked to salons to get their hair permanently and artificially curled. The chemical that made this magical transformation smelled like rotten eggs. Why in the world these girls would wreck their pretty hair on purpose was a mystery to me, but you don’t argue with fashion. Poufy, poodly, noodly, frizzy curls started to become the fashion at school. AND I ALREADY HAD IT!! Finally, what I had, someone else wanted. I not only belonged, I led. I helped girls at school understand how to work with their chemically induced curls, which were not so different from my natural ones. So, under the sink went the hot rollers, the round brush, and the blow dryer. Now I could get out of the shower, and let my curls dry on their own. It was called “wash and wear”. I had found acceptance and peace with my hair. Thank goodness for trends, and the Great Curly Perm Fad of 1978.
It was another sunny day in Miami, back in 1979, when I was walking in front of my house. High school graduation was just a few days away, and I would be moving to California a couple of days later. I noticed my clothespin was once again attached to my toes, running on ahead in a long shadow on the ground. At the top of it I saw a crowd of corkscrews. My springy ringlets swung and bounced cheerily when I flung my head left and right. “I like it!” I said to my clothespin twin, now my best friend.
I eventually got my hands in many of my friends’ hair–through high school and college, and I eventually decided to officially learn the trade of hairdressing. Once I understood how to make changes to my hair in ways that I could control, the world opened up like a Christmas package. I’ve had my hair fuchsia pink, purple, stop sign red, and platinum white. I did what I could to get as far away as possible from my curly hair. And what I found, ultimately, was that it was my authenticity. It was truly who I was and who I am today. Once in a while, I straighten it out just for fun, but I feel like someone else, and usually can’t wait to wash it and get my curls back. It took a while, but acceptance is bliss.
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