Hair Do's & Don'ts Or I Think My Hair Is From Another Planet
Posted: Monday, September 05, 2011
by Octavia Hansen
Octavia Hansen
Hair: A musical from the 60s; Cranial full coverage by follicles for those with more fortunate genes. There is a lot of it about -- real, tinted, colored, spiked, long, short. I look at hair the way a thirsty man looks for water. My hair isn't much so I keep searching for additions, styles, colors and replacement.
In the olden days, mom and I tried everything at home -- perms, rinses, hot oil. My hair was healthy, just stringy. Straight hair seems to be popular, women have been known to iron their hair and straighten it with chemicals or appliances. My hair is not straight -- it's stringy.
Hair color is one of my hobbies. It's fun. It's cheaper than a new hat. It's easy. People have different reactions to different color hair. This is a proven statement from personal observation.
When I'm blonde, people expect so much less. It's easy to make an impression as a blonde. The problem is that it's hard on the hair, feels like I'm bleaching my brain. Maybe through all that washing and rinsing with my head upside down in the sink, intellect either shrinks or gets washed away. When people expect less, I seem to do less and the downward spiral indicates a color change. Mic Jagger's Ex/supermodel/designer/actress Jerry Hall stated: underneath all this peroxide is a very smart brunette. I also loved Dolly Parton when she said, "It costs so much to look so cheap!"
When I have black hair, I have to work very hard for attention. With short, black hair, I looked like I was just off the cover of Meet The Beatles. Cute but butch. Louise Brooks and Clara Bow could carry it off, Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics could pull off red short hair, even actress Tia Leone could work it as a blonde. Not me. I attracted a lot of women. My blunt cut sent the wrong signals to everyone. (No, thank you, sisters, I don't swing that way and being the liberal gal I am, if I even thought it would work I would have tried it by now. No thanks.) Black made me blend and I don't need that. Goths are okay, but I left that look a long time ago. I had to do a lot more make up, my face just disappeared in all that darkness. Red lipstick was nice, but it was the only one that worked. Though it was easy to match hair pieces, living in the Southwest where the sun ALWAYS shines, the top of my head was always hot.
I am naturally a brunette, brownette as one of my friends coined the phrase. I don't like brown, no matter how natural. Perhaps it was left over from my high school social failures, but it was too plain for my colorful tastes. This also means every time my hair grew, brown roots always dulled those fabulous colors. When I was Harlow-blonde, the roots looked like rows of fleas where the hair parted. Not a good look.
In the seventies, I had pink hair -- Flamingo Pink was my punk color. My girlfriend at the time sported Lavender. In short black leather skirts and sky high heels, we looked great! It was great in the city with my punk friends, but anywhere else I could read a bad attitude in their faces. No, I'm not paranoid, Oklahoma was not liberal enough to be in the same room as pink hair. Children loved it, the under ten's. I think they associated it with clowns and cartoons, parents were always afraid when I would let kids touch it. Maybe they thought I was going to contaminate their psyche, they were going to grow up punk and laugh too much. (Hope so, anyway.)
I had a short stint with blue hair, dark blue, navy blue, blue-black, like Veronica of The Archie Comics. It scared a lot of people, some guys wanted to fight about it. It was only hair. If they were threatened by that, how much of the rest of the world frightened them? People made rude comments, I had to tell them it was a fashion decision and not a mistake. It grew tiresome. I changed again. Pick and choose your battles. Even if you win, what do you win? There's always another color.
I did purple hair once. I had white-blonde on top and purple (I mean PURPLE, brilliant!) around the sides. With a pony tail on the top of my head it looked like a nuclear explosion. The purple did clash with my wardrobe. It's impossible to match (all purples lean towards red or blue), and contrasting never worked. Root touch up was difficult, it took so much to get to that color in the first place. After a short while, it was just easier to change color . . . again.
When I'm a red head I get a lot of attention. It's not anything I do, it's just a reputation red heads have. I get a lot of "Is that your real hair?" Geez, if I had a big chest would you ask about that, too? How rude! How stupid! At least ask me out to dinner and I might give you a clue. Do I ask if the bulge in your pants is a roll of quarters or a pickle? If you can't tell about a red head, does it matter?
A gentleman friend once said to me: "When I'm driving, I'd look as I passed a blonde. I'd stop for a brunette. But I'd back up three blocks for a red head!" What a guy!
I used to have long hair. When it was cut, I still had the long hair mannerisms -- the hair flip, running my fingers through then suddenly finding the end, finding clips and ties were useless. It was one of the worst decisions of my life. For all the stupid things I have ever done, I did most of them alone, no one ever knew. But cut your hair and everyone sees it. My hair, the original string mess, has never recovered from the loss to the scissors. Now my hair only gets a little past my shoulders and then breaks off, or it's so dry and brittle it has to be trimmed. The waif-look is great on twenty-somethings, on older women it's just a fright-wig. I could not believe for all the head covering available, Andy Warhol chose a hair piece that looked like he stuck his wet finger in a light socket. Mine grew that way, what was his thinking?
Tina Turner and Patti LaBelle made hair explosions work for them. I'm always searching for a hair statement, something of my own, but it's an elusive, trial-and-error experimental thing. She never fooled me -- Lady Godiva was just in a hurry, running late, and decided to comb on the way. With so much legendary hair, no wonder she forgot to dress. Having tons of delicious hair is such an advantage, mostly that everyone else wants it; it can be used as a lasso and men want to run barefoot through it. Even dolls have impossible mounds of full, wavy hair in different colors, sometimes all colors.
Never underestimate the power of hair. It figures in a lot of stories . . . Rapunzal, Guinevere was known for her blonde tresses, I never could figure out how Snow White had black hair, and Sampson's strength was in his hair. Medusa was originally so beautiful and vain that the god's turned her hair into snakes -- ah, too beautiful for her own good. Looking at their photographs now, The Beatles outrageous long hair cuts of their day don't look so threatening. Their hair didn't even touch their collar! How long is that? Two of my friends grew out their hair and then cut it for Locks of Love, donating hair to children suffering from long-term medical hair loss. What a donation! Hair is THAT important.
Hair is what you see first. It's hard to hide, easier to decorate. It's a focal point -- when someone has it, they ignore it; when they don't, the entire world flaunts theirs. I spend a lot of time at beauty supply stores, in those hundreds of square feet directed at women's heads, there HAS to be something I haven't tried that will make me fabulous . . . on the outside. I already have it going on, on the inside. Somewhere is a bottle, a magic potion, that will turn damaged straw hair into a silken wonder. But right now, my roots are making an appearance and there's a color I haven't tried. Think I'll search for the magic later . . .
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