Hair Apparent
April 14, 2005

We've all had bad hair days—the flip flops, the curl crashes, the faux-hawk fizzles. Days that are so beyond gel, only a turban (or a paper bag) will solve the problem. All that keeps you going is the faith that those wacky Hair Gods are so fickle that tomorrow, for no reason whatsoever, your hair might look great.

Except for me. I'm having a bad hair life.

They say everyone wants somebody else's hair: the straight-haired long for curls, the frizzy-haired pine for smooth. But nobody wants my hair. It's plain, dull brown (not chestnut, mocha, or mahogany), of a texture that decades of stylists have charitably referred to as "fine." Translation: thin. And not only as thin as a politician's promise, but flat, droopy, and utterly unresponsive to treatment.

If it were also straight, I could have sported the popular Beatle girlfriend look we all tried to duplicate in the '60s. But I was a curly-headed tot, the only one in my family, according to the same sort of genetic hiccup that made my mom the only redhead in her family. But genes are capricious. I never inherited a single strand of my mom's voluminous red hair; all I got was a persistent, erratic wave. It was okay for the curly "pixie cut" I had when I was seven, but by puberty, I'd way outgrown the pixie look. And the wispy wave action along the hairline played hell with my attempts to achieve the long, straight mod look. When I washed my hair, I had to Scotch-tape my bangs to my forehead, hoping they'd dry in place. The results were not pretty.

As a counter-offensive, when I was 12, I purchased a product called Curl-Free, guaranteed to chemically steamroll your hair into submission. I don't remember it doing much good, despite the fact that my mom has never forgiven me for "straightening" my hair. (If only!) By my junior year in high school, I'd mercifully ditched the bangs and taken to setting my hair on giant rollers. It only took four for my entire head of hair.

I got a shag cut in college, but as my so-called adulthood progressed, I went in for the long "natural" look—via hair spray, hot rollers, mousse, spritz, cream, gel, texturizers, moisturizers, anti-gravity devices, and rubber cement. (Okay, I made up those last two.) All to little avail. My best friend was my trusty blow dryer, with which I zealously attacked my wet hair every day for the slightest perceived infraction. It took me an hour just to get out of the bathroom in the morning—before I'd even had my first hit of caffeine or sugar—and that was just to look not hideous. (If I wanted to actually look good, it took me twice as long.) But here's the thing about thin hair: the longer it grows and the harder you blow dry it, the flatter it gets.

Over the years Jon at Brats, and Teri at Emerald Iguana (who have remained my friends despite my unreasonable demands that they work miracles) have given me some great professional hairstyles, pumped up with goop and blown-dried to a frenzy. But it's funny how you can never recreate a salon style in the privacy of your own home; my hair falls like a soufflé after the first washing, making me more cranky than ever. No wonder Art Boy quakes like San Andreas every time I threaten to go to the salon. To keep peace in the family, I stopped doing anything at all with my hair, blowing it flat and ignoring it. I called it the Dead Hippie look.

But benign neglect won't be enough when I'm traveling for a month this summer with no time or suitcase space to waste on a blow dryer. It was time for something drastic. I asked Teri for a short cut that didn't require blow drying or goop. (Giving myself plenty of time between now and June for it to grow out, in case I hated it.) We both took a deep breath and she commenced to cut. And the miracle I least expected occurred: liberated from the deathgrip of length, my hair bounced back to life. Cut short and left alone, the curl I've been fighting all my life gives my hair the illusion of texture. Even after washing, it springs back like Spiderman; I'm out of the bathroom in 20 minutes.

The result has been dramatic: jaws have dropped, eyes have popped, heads have craned. Often when you change your appearance, friends and colleagues can't always tell what's different. "Um…new outfit?" they say gingerly. "New contacts? Oh, wait, you got rid of that Nine Inch Nails tattoo?" But with me, everybody knows it's the hair. Compliments have come tumbling out so effusively, I have to wonder, what kind of troll did I look like before? (Please note: that was a rhetorical question.) It's not that I'm suddenly gorgeous, it's more like I'm projecting irresistible pheromones of freedom—free from the tyranny of product and equipment to get on with my life.

Why do I tell you all this? In the interest of harmony in our fractured world. If I can make peace with my hair, there's hope for all of us.