J-
I laughed at Candy, my beloved hairdresser of 25 years, when she said to me on July 22nd that letting her straighten my hair would change my life. Brazilian Blowout, she told me, would result in the swingy, frizz-free, carefree tresses I've longed for my whole life. Or at least since I first ironed my hair in 7th grade.
"And," she said again,"I swear it will change your life."
I snorted or chortled here, my Diet Peach Snapple threatening to exit through my nose. Changing my life is something I've been working hard at, and it has nothing to do with anything as trite as straightening my hair.
"You know I've given up on trips to Lourdes. I've come to terms, in a mature, Zen kind of way, with the fact that my hair, rather than be chemically forced to be something that by nature it isn't, is to be cherished for what it is. It must be embraced."
My hair is ridiculously fine, but I have a lot of it. Left to itself, it corkscrews in the underlayers and the top ones pouf into electrocuted poodle fuzz. I've been wearing my darkish blonde hair shoulder length in its natural state of curl/frizz since returning to New York aeons ago from boarding school. That was in Switzerland, a wonderful country, not only for the obvious alps, watches and chocolates, but for its crisp, dry air and very high annual percentage of good hair days.
New York weather is ideally suited to a penal colony. A hybrid of Siberia and Devil’s Island, it is either frigid or broiling and always too damp. Manhattan is the worst place on earth for my hair, except for Indonesia in August. My hair was so bad in Sumatra, that I became convinced I'd done something awful in a previous lifetime. My move from NYC to Boulder many years ago, was prompted as much by the lure of being able to ski at A-Basin every day, as by the enticement of how great my hair looked whenever I went out to Colorado to visit The Skier.
At the very best of atmospherically benevolent conditions --usually three or four days in the dead of winter here in the city, when even the humidity is too cold to go out-- my hair, I've been told, has a certain Botticelli angel look, although I think it is more pre-Raphaelite myself. But why quibble? Hair is evanescent, and of no importance in the greater scheme of things. Actually, that's not even remotely true: hair is hugely important in terms of evolutionary biology, but we can discuss that another time.
I know that having frizzy hair is not important; that looks are not what matters. People don't commit suicide because they can no longer deal with the lifelong curse of untameable frizz; they find ways to deal with it. Death by frizz may exist, and, come to think of it, probably does on reality TV,Obese, Pregnant, Underage & Frizzy, but my experience with it has been more along the lines of deep seasonal depression, terminal avoidance of mirrors, and buying endless miracle hair products. I have justified spending so much money on hair stuff that uses the words hair, frizz, humidity and control in one sentence, that it merits its own 12 step program.
My hair makes me very unhappy. That's the bottom line.
So when Candy told me that this new Brqazilian hair straightening would change my life, and that it would cost 500 times the average daily wage in Central Africa, I rejected it out of hand because I just don't do things like that. You should know that I am a long (twice) divorced mother of two. My daughter is 21 and was born when I was 37. Old. My son is 15 and was born when I was 43. Really old. I was finally brave enough to take them and leave their alcoholic father, the Sperm Donor, 8 years ago this month. I've been a headhunter for the past 15 years, but the business of getting people jobs is dead right now. I'm a junior at Columbia, starting my second year at General Studies, the most fabulous school in the world. I will get my BA in Writing in 2011, when I turn 60. It's frightening to write that down.
I know that nothing worthwhile involves instant gratification. The notion of being able to buy something that would immediately --three hours from now-- change my life was enticing but not believable. Candy kept swearing it was true. She kept pushing. Sometimes you need to do something risky and out of character. Just to shake things out of a rut. Unmeployed student, divorced mother of two, responsible for staggering amounts of tuition, care of a handicapped sibling and an 85 year old mother with dementia, I did the only thing I could think of. I pulled out the credit card I hadn't used in almost in a year, and said the magic words, charge it.
My life has changed.
I love my hair. I don't really believe it will stay this way, although apparently it really will, for 6-12 months. It is shiny and swingy and straight. My hair is so fine that it has no weight at all. This gravity defying aspect is completely gone: my hair is now heavy and falls like hair in the Pantene ads on TV. I have found the Holy Grail, the Pouf-B-Gone I've hankered for since I first ironed my hair in 1963.
My hair and I went out to East Hampton on the Jitney to visit Thelma & Louise. We sat on the sand at Georgica beach, where my hair always looks like a Chia-Pet. It remained smooth, lustrous, completely free of frizz. Fog rolled in and enveloped us; I sat in my sand chair casually flipping my hair and running my fingers through its silkiness. We were caught in two different rain storms. My hair got wet and didn't frizz! I can't believe it. I shake my hair and it moves. My hair is in better condition than it's ever been.
I walked in to writing workshop and the women, not prone to warmth, stopped in mid sentence and told me I looked great, really put together, and how was I was managing to look so cool in this weather. They couldn't hide their astonishment. It is, of course, the hair. Having Jennifer Aniston/Network anchor hair goes a long way to helping me project that confident wasp chic I've always secretly longed for.
-S
