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

of my high school days where I felt like I should carry a bag of bread with me to feed the boys sauntering down the halls sporting their bird like styles. Sometimes, I even find myself preoccupied with moments wherein I ponder what came over the guys who watched what is now considered a cult-classic music video and said of the wacky avian hair do, ‘OH! I HAVE TO HAVE IT! I MUST! AND I WILL HAVE IT! AS GOD IS MY WITNESS, I WILL LOOK LIKE A FRIGGN’ BIRD BEFORE THE DAY IS DONE! YES, I WILL!’

 

I have to wonder what the stylists thought when one of those guys walked into their places of business and tried to describe what it was they wanted – remember there were no smart phones one could whip out and use to show the person tasked with creating the style – so there had to be a lot of hands to head mime-like description that probably went like this. “So, yeah, I want it to… you know… swoop in the front but it’s gotta have wings on the side and the back it’s gotta have like a dove tail only a really long dove tail. Yeah, that’s it.”

 

Incidentally, I went to school with a guy whose mother owned her own salon and she gave her son exactly what he wanted. No joke. One day Chris looked like a normal blond haired, brown eyed, and relatively attractive guy with an adorable laugh. The next day I looked down the hall and saw this hair-thing sort of floating over the top of all the students and I was like What the hell?

 

When I saw it was Chris, all I could do was shake my head. But I have to say, it worked for him. Suddenly he became the guy all the girls liked. Only I’d known him for years so my poor brain just couldn’t see it. (And when I say his hair floated above the other students you need to know Chris was about six feet tall at sixteen then with his new do, I swear his height from the tip of his… wings to his toes jumped a good eight inches – seriously)

 

So many variations on the seagull look came after that first incarnation. Men all around the world decided to try different colors, multi-colors and asymmetrical shapes. I’ve got to say, it took some serious cojanes to pull off those looks. Heck, some of my favorite high school memories come from me sitting in my group in Physics class and looking at Mark (he with the mighty mullet head) and Chris (he with the gullet feeding bird head) working out linear wave equations. I swear sometimes I’d just stare at their hair and be like what the f#ck were you thinking? (They probably thought I was scoping them out because I thought they were hot – nope)

 

But wait men, if you thought I was only going to touch on the 80s – you are sorely mistaken. Likewise, to you beautiful men of color, I’ve not forgotten you. Heaven’s no.

 

In fact, let’s jump forward to the early 90s and the Look at this! I had someone shave a word or image into my hair styles made popular by young black men back then. Their heads became canvases that could spread a message to the world about who the man sporting the look was. Consider this – you’re a fly on the wall in one of the barber shops where these proud young men walked in and when asked by the barber, ‘So, what are we going to do today?” those young men sat down in the chair and replied thusly to the question…

 

I want it flat on the top (I can do that, thought the barber) I want that to be at least an inch high (doable, thought the barber). Then I want you to shave the sides down so I’ve just got the flattop (Odd, but alright – it’ll be sort of a stove pipe hat look, thought the barber) Only don’t take too much off the sides because I want you to shave my name into my hair. (Excuse me, son? Are you figurin' on forgetting who you are in the near future?, says the barber)

 

But, being professionals and knowing that the 'customer is always right' they gave their clients that which they had requested. Of course, in the back of my mind I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if the barber spelled the words incorrectly? Or what if they’d not properly assessed how much space would be needed to spell a name like DeShawndry (Yes, it’s a real name)

 

 

♀ Ladies – It’s Your Turn…Again!

 

How could I discuss tragic hair disasters without broaching the 1990s? It was the time when so many women fell victim to the over inflated supermodel styles of the 1990s. After all, we all wanted those thick, luxurious perfectly highlighted locks of hair even though we knew that there was no way on God’s green Earth that we’d ever get it. Or maybe you saw Rachel on Friends sporting the same sort of fuller-than-naturally-possible hair and you decided you simply had to have the ‘Rachel’ cut. 

 

On TV and in print ads it’s a style that looks adorable. Sadly though, you quickly learned that while it was a great look for Jennifer Aniston, it didn’t quite work for you. Sure if we all had crews of knockout hair dressers who could touch up our hair between trips to the grocery store and who could put in just enough of a curl at the ends of our hair to frame our faces, we’d all look as if we were walking, talking Da Vinci masterpieces.

 

Only we don’t. And many of us had to learn the hard way that sometimes it’s best to adore a style from a far. Yes, I know imitation is considered a compliment by many people. I also know a bad decision when I see it. And sadly, getting that coveted Rachel hairstyle didn’t work out too well for SO many of you.

 

That’s right. Thousands of women had to face a harsh reality the day after getting that cut. They washed their hair and tried their damnedest to get it to look like it did not even twelve hours earlier. Only they realized that to reproduce the wonderful, bouncy style they’d so proudly shown off to their friends and loved ones right after they got it cut, they needed to have 4 arms, 3 bottles of hair styling products, and 2 hours to walk away with a style that was more Rat Hell than The Rachel. Good grief! All they were missing was a partridge in a pear tree and they’d have been set. 

 

♂ Gentlemen – Right Back at Ya!

 

Oh, you guys… those first few years of the 90s gave way to the grunge look of groups like Pearl Jam and Nirvana. Now those guys always looked like they’d just rolled out of bed and it was so cool because it was the sort of look that you figured only a moron could screw up. After all, you’d perfected the whole ‘looking like a mess after a long night’s sleep’ thing years earlier.

 

But for some crazy reason your grungy morning hair just didn’t look the same as theirs. Nope. It didn’t even come close! In fact, I’ll bet you looked in the mirror and wondered How did I f#ck up grunge?

 

How can anyone mess up intentionally messy looking hair? How can that even be possible? Perhaps it’s because the guys who sported that look were like the lovely Ms. Aniston and had ‘people’ who perfected their ‘just rolled out of bed’ look before they took any publicity photos or appeared on the Grammys. Who knows? Maybe when the kings of grunge rock plopped down in their ‘make me look cooler than awesome’ chairs they were actually clean cut, button down sorts of fellows! It’s one of those things that will have to remain a mystery.

 

Why? Because just as no magician worth his salt spills the behind-the-scenes beans to his tricks… hair stylists – the really amazing ones who get paid oodles of money to cut other people’s hair – wouldn’t dare share their styling secrets.

 

♀ Hey, Ladies –  Let’s talk aging hair

 

Oh, my lovely XX chromosome sporting fellow humans, maybe you survived all those years without once giving into the temptation of a ‘hip’ cut and made it to the aught years of the 21st century with tried and true hairstyles that will always be in style after all that’s why they are tried and true. But then somewhere mid-decade you looked around and saw that your children or maybe your nieces and nephews were sporting cuts that you remember back when you were younger and thought that maybe you were due for a little bit of a change.

 

Maybe you considered a ‘light’ perm so that your hair could look bouncy and vibrant like that girl from Desperate House Wives (Which girl? Does it really matter? They all had stunning tresses). Only so many of your friends had tried that look and had failed miserably. Thank the Lord above you kept your head and didn’t jump into the idiot pool. You knew that you were entirely too busy with work, family, etc and would never be able to maintain a look like that anyway. (And this you knew because you’d already tried that with The Rachel about ten years ago)

 

Essentially, you’d come to the disheartening realization that the long, flowy ‘pretty enough to be on a shampoo commercial’ hair that had been a dream of yours for years was more delusional than dreamlike. So you decided to go in the extreme opposite direction... the cute little pixie cut. You figured not only was a pixie cut adorable but it would be so easy to fix each morning... wash it, towel dry it, add a dab of the current hip hair product and POOF a perky little do.

 

Ah, you were a dreamer in those first few years of the 21st century, weren’t you? But when you heard the swish of the scissors as your twenty-something stylist started the radical hair change it dawned on you that maybe your face wasn’t right for a pixie cut. Or maybe you realized you’d have to come to the salon every ten days and lay down lots of money to maintain it.Or worse yet, perhaps you remembered the annoying cowlicks you had and the reason why you let your hair grow out in the first place.

 

Unfortunately, it was too late to stop the madness. Sure you walked out of the salon looking terrific and feeling better about the choice you’d made to give yourself a cute and yet mature hairstyle but you woke up the next morning with hair that would have made the late-great Phyllis Diller proud.

♀ + ♂ Hair for the Long Haul.

 

Luckily for men the first decade of the 21st century wasn't too bad... hair wise. Meaning, there weren't really been any far out sorts of styles to emulate other than the reemergence of the sk8er dude look. Only you knew you were entirely too old to be wearing your bangs in your eyes like a sheepdog but never fear there’s still plenty of time left in this century for you to wander back into the land of outrageously bad haircuts.

 

Ah yes, hair and the various ways which people try to style it has been the bane of human existence since the first pretty little braid was woven back in the day of mammoth pelts and bone jewelry. What’s more, I’ve no doubt even the earliest women found themselves looking at their reflections in the still water of a pond saying ACK! Ooga mugha oooh? (Roughly translates to Holy Sh1T! What the hell did I do to my hair?) Then they looked to their mates with that what do you think honey? look.

 

To wit their mates glanced at their women and for the slightest moment hesitated before responding with a toothless  Moog accka su mu