My friend Mabel came over to visit before her hair appointment. She’s going to get blonded. From mousey brown to blonde. A bit nervous, she said as she paused at my front door, “I hope it works. I’ve never been to this hairdresser before.”
To which I replied, “Hey, it’s only hair.”
Mabel came back several hours later with blonde streaks and curls. Apparently, a full color would’ve cost her three months’ worth of groceries, or a fill-up at the gas station. Hating the curls, she washed it as soon as she got home. But the streaks made her happy.
I remembered the time in Sri Lanka where a new-to-me-hairdresser blonded my hair and it turned out the color of moldy mushrooms. I freaked. Who was that old hag in the mirror? Insisting he redo it, he stripped my hair of all color. I was going to go au natural.
My natural color at that point was white, which I called silver. I would never again sit for hours, breathing fumes, for the sake of vanity.
Reflecting on my “Hey, it’s only hair,” statement, I remembered when I was in sixth grade and my mother’s hairdresser, Bea, cut my long hair into a cut where my bangs were maybe a quarter inch over my forehead. The sides didn’t even touch my ears. I felt like a skinned cat, an ugly duckling. I didn’t want to go to school but my mother told me I looked cute. Hmm, mothers lie.
The worst thing about school that day was we were having a spelling bee. Boys on one side of the room. Girls on the other.
Our classroom had a boys’ and a girls’ bathroom in it. The bathroom was my refuge that morning. I hid there and wouldn’t come out. No matter what my girlfriends said to coax me out, I refused. Until Richard Fox, the cutest boy in the class, stood by the locked door and said softly, “Everything’s okay, Lucy. Come out, it’s not bad. I promise.”
I believed him.
I didn’t get my hair cut for decades after that.
While in college, living at married housing, my husband (ex-husband No.1) asked me to cut his shoulder-length hair. He knew that I didn’t know a thing about cutting hair, but he insisted anyway. So, on that sunny day, he sat on a chair in front of the apartments with a towel draped over his shoulders. I’m not sure what kind of scissors I used, but I began to hack away, slowly. Impatient, he said, “Move it along.” So I did and he went from a hippie hairstyle to a humiliating Prince Valiant cut. The next day at one of his classes, held in an auditorium, someone from the top row yelled down at him, “What? Your wife cut your hair?”
Still makes me laugh.
As my hair turned silver, I did get my hair cut. By a hip Japanese hair stylist, Tod. It kept getting shorter and shorter and I got mega compliments about it. One time, after Tod came back from Japan, he told me he’d give me the latest cut in Japan. OK, I thought, I trusted him.
I never looked at the mirror when he cut my hair. Bad move. This time I ended up with a military-style brush cut. It was the most current cut in Japan – for men!
During that time period I owned a sales company. That day there was a national boutique show, held in San Francisco, where my company had several booths. I was late to arrive as Tod was busy giving me the latest. Being the boss, I could arrive late, except that day I had to walk past all the other booths and salespeople who I knew over the years, with my brush cut, flared up in the front with gel.
I had two choices: hang my head in shame and slink past everyone, hoping they wouldn’t notice, OR, hold my head high and exude confidence that this was the best damn haircut I’d ever had.
I went for choice number two. Faked it until I made it. Too bad I didn’t have that kind of courage at 11 years old.
Oddly enough there was a new guy, an extremely handsome one, who had a booth at the end of our row. Mid-day he came over to me and said, “I just have to tell you, I love your hair.”
What was a Girl to do? I smiled and said, “Thanks, I love it, too.”
The handsome guy was definitely another Richard Fox.
Lucy Llewellyn Byard is currently a freelance journalist for the Record-Bee and various other publications. You can email her at lucywgtd@gmail.com
