BAD HAIR

Going to the hairdresser to get your hair done has much in common with going to the dentist in that you sit in a strange and flexible chair covered with a bib, and put a lot of trust in a relative stranger’s ability to achieve a positive outcome. Thankfully the dentist has Novocain to ease the pain of a bad tooth. But despite the best laid plans and the best haircut in the world, it is inevitable that one will have a bad hair day.

Luckily most of my really bad hair days remain obscured by the mists of time, to a time before I could afford to go to have my hair done by a professional. There is nothing more guaranteed to produce bad hair than an insecure teenager and a home hair color kit. Unless it is that same teenager and a Toni home perm kit! In my case it was both, and the resultant slightly kinky, off green and tan hair proved that there are worse things than having mousy brown hair, and wearing glasses.

However, I have to wonder as I observe today’s teenagers, if that same look might now be considered the next fashion trend.  Seriously … is it possible to make a fashion statement today without involving what, in my youth would have been considered a disastrously bad hair day?  Shaving your head in random patterns and painting it with rainbows, streaking your hair with acid green color and clipping this or that portion so that it stands up or sits down and rolls over … these appear to be deliberate outcomes, and are in fact the desired result achieved after heavy use of what is now called product.

Thus, I have come to realize that the really bad hair days of my high school years

… the off-green color

… the sadly flattened kinky tresses

… the unevenly cut bangs

… the frizzy puff cloud of curls

… the unfortunate choice of dark brown color

… the desperate decision to flip my pony tail forward to create bangs

… all these and others were merely a manifestation of my incipient fashionista persona. In fact I have seen each and every one of these in some fashion magazine paired with the latest in post apocalyptic designer wear. It would appear I was simply ahead of my time by 50 years, and lacked the PR machine to put the correct spin on it.

So, I say “Here is to Clairol, Toni, and Revlon for giving us all the opportunity to become the fashion icons that we aspire to be.”

p.s. I knew I should have stood my ground on the forward flipped ponytail bangs experiment. The other choir members just did’t get the whole concept!