"Any day now," my hair stylist said. "The perm has been out for a long time. But it's coming back. Everything comes back eventually."
Except, I fervently hope, the feathered bangs of the 80s, the fashion-challenged decade in so many ways. I myself subscribed to the feathered bang look for several years. And that is all that ever needs to be said about it.
"I would LOVE for the perm to come back," a friend said when I told her my stylist's prognostications. "My hair needs all the body it can get."
So had I also thought, very long ago. On the scale of hair "body," my natural hair rated -57, slightly above jellyfish. So a perm that could boost me up to, say, 1? Bring it on.
Had the procedure come with an instruction manual, with a title such as "What to do with your hair after alien hair has invaded," there may have been a chance for it to look normal. But with no understanding of poofy, curly, enormous hair -- and wasn't that what we thought we wanted when we got a perm? -- I resembled some sort of poodle hybrid that hadn't yet been created. A poodle that was disinclined to be tamed, and demanded servitude.
When my enslavement to the perm finally ended, my hair landed in the clutches of yet another exacting master: the curling iron. Eventually it convinced me I was nothing without its waves, its curls, its body-giving properties. I was chained. Whither I went, it went.
The day I threw off that yoke was a day to celebrate. So when my stylist suggested recently that I could rid myself of a pesky backwards curl on the ends of my hair with a flat iron, the apostle Paul's wise words flashed in my mind: "Be not entangled again with the yoke of the curling -- or flat -- iron."
So while I may be safe from that particular trap, I HAVE become entangled again with the yoke of the Velcro rollers, another contraption I had given up but had neglected to purge from my possession, setting the stage for its re-entanglement in my hair's affairs. In the midst of this bondage, I yearn to be free once more.
I am waiting now for my stylist to say that fine, thin, straight hair, with bangs, is in. Limp hair. Jellyfish hair. Hair with absolutely NO body. And THAT will truly be a day of freedom.
2 comments:
Rollers are a jinx to marriages. Do NOT become entangled in the dreaded velcro rollers. From one who used to use empty frozen orange juice cans to roll her hair (yes, it was that long; yes I was that stupid), I beg you to look at what became of the marriage I was in at the time and take heed. The hero is exceptional, but a man can take just so much.
It is true that we must be careful of the burdens we put upon our men. Oddly enough, the Hero finds the rollers tolerable, even somewhat endearing -- especially when compared to my hair spray, which he views as his personal nemesis. But even HE might be sorely tested if the rollers were frozen orange juice cans...I will thus take your wise advice to heart...
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