When a Southern Woman Rambles... by L. Avery Brown (best ereader for pdf .TXT) 📕

Bad hair. 

It happens to us all. And I’m not talking about the kind of bad hair that can be fixed with a dab of gel nor do I mean the sort of thing where a quick little trim to spruce it up will help. No, I’m talking the kind of bad hair day that stretches into a week or two and sometimes can last as long as several months.

♀ Ladies – Step Away from the Styling Products!

Clear your mind of anything and everything that may be going on around you at this exact moment. Picture a time when your hair was wonderful. It was bouncy, full, and silky-strong and it did whatever you wanted it to do.

Now - toss all those wonderful memories aside and try to remember your worst hair memory. Don't fight it. Let the dark moment loose once again. I promise - you will be alright. Are you there? At that moment...

Maybe it happened long, long ago when you were much younger and thought you’d absolutely die if didn’t get the coveted Dorothy Hamill ‘wedge’…

Unfortunately, when you decided to embrace the Olympic zeal and perkiness of the gold medal winning ice skater and her famous hairdo back in ’76, you wound up with a cut that looked like your hairstylist used a set of nesting Tupperware bowls to get crisp, even, all around layers in your hair. And then, to add a little more insult to your look, your stylist du jour whipped out a pair of hedge clippers from their drawer of magic scissors to try and reproduce that coveted ‘V’ shape.

And, sadly, in the end... what you wound up with was something that looked more like a Cyrillic letter one might see on the back of a warm-up jacket worn by a masculine looking Soviet gymnast.

Yes, it was an all-around tragic moment in your life. And you had to endure Hamill-Hell for months. (Unless you were one of those lucky people who has quick hair growth genes.) There were a few snickers about the resulting hair do that you decided was a definite what the hell was I thinking? less than five minutes after you heard the few first snip-snip-snips but you made it through the ordeal with the loving support of your family. Or perhaps you had a significant other back then who learned one of the most valuable lessons when these words slipped not so smoothly from his or her lips, ‘Don’t be silly, Honey. It looks... (a moment’s hesitation) ...great’. 

To that I say… Oh no you didn’t!

To the ears of the hair-don’t victim – a hesitant compliment – is like shouting, ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, what did you do to your hair?’ Because what your significant other thought was a barely noticeable hint of hesitation turned out to be the ultimate no-no as far as hair compliments are concerned because one should never ever  pause when commenting on the new hairstyle of a loved one. Believe it or not, in this sort of situation… honesty is okay. (Just make it gentle) After all, it’s not like she didn’t know her cut looked horrid before asking you. But for a person to feign enthusiasm is like pouring salt in a wound. So, be honest. 

*Though one must note the important caveat to such honesty: Frowning or smirking while commenting on a horrid-hair-happening negates the honesty clause. Should an honest remark come across in any way other than sympathetic, the author will not be held responsible for any ‘WHAT DID YOU SAY?!’ retaliation levied on the moron who dared be anything other than supportive!*

So maybe your hairtastrophy came a little later than the dreaded Wedge-Head…

Were you an 80s gal? Were you were mesmerized by Madonna back in 1984*?  And maybe your hair hair-mare came to you when you simply had to mimic the hip, new and somewhat punkish looking singer of the ‘Like a Virgin’ pop smash. Yes, maybe in your addled, youthful head you thought Madonna had a look that screamed ‘Come on Girl! Let your inner Material Girl loose!’ 

(*1984 – I think Orwell would laugh at the irony of so many young women wanting to look and act like someone else instead of being themselves.)

So, you went to a stylist who you were sure would be able to give you that same hot ‘stand out in a crowd’ coif that the once known simply as the girl with the last name of Ciccone donned so famously.

You figured a little peroxide here, some snipping there, and a little dab of the newest, coolest styling product on the market... mousse... and you’d end up with a hairstyle that would electrify your personality. Only when you saw your reflection in the mirror, you thought you looked like more you’d been struck by lightning than you looked like Madonna with her expertly dressed messy locks. 

How did that happen? How is it that her hair made her look hot-n-sexy and yours just made you look like a hot mess? Because unlike Madonna’s professionally maintained style, your hair was fried by all the peroxide and then it was snipped-and-clipped so severely in spots it stuck out in all directions. And as if that weren’t enough, you wasted all the money you made while working that summer at the WeinerKing buying mousse by the crateful just so your hair could maintain its sadly more shabby than chic shape!

But ho ho! There were other odd styles from the 80s, too. Yes, I’d be remiss if I didn’t dredge up the harsh, asymmetrical-dos that some women chose to embrace as if they had stepped out of a Museum of Modern Art with some nouveau piece of keratin wrapped art attached to their shoulders. Many was the time I remember walking down the halls of my high school and seeing some of my classmates who’d opted for this sort of split-level cut coming towards me.

When they’d stop to chat, I felt like I was getting seasick because my friends tended to walk and talk with their heads tilted to the ‘short’ side so that their less lengthy locks looked to be about the same length as their longer tresses. So I, who was walking upright in the standard homo sapiens stance felt as if I was off balance enough that it made me queasy.

Then came the 90s – God bless us. What were people thinking? But women you’ll have to wait. I want to take a few minutes to discuss masculine hair goofs… 

That’s right boys, it’s your turn now. Time to buckle up… it’s going to be a bumpy ride because we know what you did…

♂ Gentlemen – It’s Never too late to Own-up to Your Hairy Harebrained Styles!

That’s right. And don’t even begin to act like you don’t know what I’m talking about! 

Oh, your lot played it safe over the last half-century or so. Prior to that though was the masculine Golden Age of Hair also known as the 19th century where you XYers had quite the love affair with your hair – but alas, 19th century hair is a hairtastrophy in and of itself. So let’s bring this narrative a little closer to today.

Yes, your gender donned slicked back, neatly barbered hair from the 20s to the 40s and then came the flattop crew cuts of the 50s. But sometime around the early 60s there was a definite shift from neatly cropped heads to mop-top shaggy dos and a little later on in the late 60s and early 70s you saw fit to don long-stringy hair or fluffy-puffy-fro styles. 

Though I will say aside from those minor follicle faux pas moments, all was well in man coif land because that was about as exciting as you got with your hair. But then along came the 80s and suddenly you decided the women were having entirely too much fun with the various hair styles and styling accoutrements which let them express themselves in a way that let people know who they were from at least a block away.

Yes, those damn 80s. It was bad enough for women. But the men… for some inane reason they fell in love with what are, without a doubt, some of the most stupid looking hairstyles ever!

Yes, that’s a harsh statement; true but harsh nonetheless.

If you weren’t lucky enough to be a man in your teens to mid20s during the 80s, you missed out on quite the 'happening'. You see, the worst part of the whole 80s experience was that while there are still some women who live with their hair poofed out to high-heaven today their numbers are growing smaller every day. However there are oodles of grown-ass adult men – those adorable creatures – who have clung to their styles since their chests were broader than the pot bellies they have today well into the 21st century.

The style about which I speak is… the mullet. Yes, the quasi-hair cut that melded together the bad boy ‘long hair band’ look with the neat ‘my Mama made me get my hair cut’ look creating a strange hybrid of the two. As if that wasn’t enough of a keratin-calamity some of you even went so far as to get – perms for the front half of your heads to really make the business end of your cranial covering stand apart from the party in the back half. 

Best of all were those of you who decided the dual-purpose hairstyle wasn’t quite enough so you added a little something extra – the rattail. Gentlemen, for future reference, if someone suggests to you a hip, new hairstyle wherein a rodent is used to described any aspect of the look – run away. Run far, far away and don’t look back. 

Otherwise you might find yourself in the throes of hair-passion as you lovingly consider getting a mullet (either with or without a tail). That’s right. But don’t try to fool yourself into believing the mullet was the only hairtastrophy to befall men in the 80s (lasting well into the 90s and even*gulp* beyond). No… there’s more. 

Let’s take it on back to the early 80s. Are you feeling the groove? Yeah, that’s right. Get that quarter time synth driven pseudomusic in your head and you’ll be there. Close your eyes.

No, wait, don’t close your eyes – you can’t read this if your eyes are closed.

Do you remember the group ‘A Flock of Seagulls’? I seriously doubt a young Mike Score (lead singer for the group) had been struggling to come up with a name for his sort of punk but not quite punk English band (Damn those English! They gave the world some seriously dumbass man hair in the 80s and… oh, I forgot about the mullet... sorry to any of you may be from the UK for that one – let’s call it even)

Back to the struggling Mr. Score and how he may or may not have looked in the mirror after getting what his stylist promised him was a cool new cut and exclaimed, ‘OH YES! That’s it! God! Yes! Yes! YES! We’ll call ourselves A Flock of Seagulls!’ (Granted it might not have been such an intense moment that came across quite as sexually charged as presented but if it is how it went down, it was, no doubt, a moving moment for him.)

That look worked so well for him especially since music videos were but a burgeoning arena for the world of music. It made him stand out among a field of other odd-hair fellows which was quite a feat considering there were so many weird man hair styles around at the time. Today, when I’m driving down the road and my car’s HD satellite radio is tuned to a Classic 80s’ station and I hear I Ran (So Far Away) I sometimes pause a moment to ponder what Mike Score thinks of that haircut today.

And then, invariably, my mind runs amok through memories