Hellish Haircut Redux

A couple of weeks ago, I succumbed to my annual April madness; once again, despite the fact that I was still grappling with growing out the haircut from hell from a year ago, I made the dire mistake of paying someone to take a scissors to my locks. In truth, it was an attempt to tweak said haircut into something more resembling the style I was originally after that tempted me to once again seek "professional" help. Since, in the ensuing months, I had also discovered that I personally could (and did) do nothing but compound the damage with a scissors or coloring bottle in my hand… I hushed the voice of past experience, and of my own free will, seated myself once again in the Chair of Mystery. The one where, the minute your butt touches the nauga-hide, you speak in some unknown tongue that is undecipherable to anyone wielding a sharp instrument within twenty feet.

Last year, "I want my hair to look exactly like it does now only shorter" translated to, "Give me a wedge. I want to look like a thirty-something soccer mom from ten years ago." This time around, "Layer the bangs back into the rest of my hair, but DON’T layer the back" obviously sounded like, "I’m really dying for a seventies’ shag." Like the one I got in 1973 when I finally ventured to have my long, stringy hippie locks cut upon my graduation from high school.

If anything, this haircut has been more of a disaster than last year’s. It’s three weeks since my temporary loss of sanity, and I have still not figured out how to control this mop. Forget making it look how I want it to look. It never looks the same way twice. I’d be perfectly happy to let it do whatever it wanted to do, at this point. But it doesn’t seem to have figured out what that is. And I’m just too old to encounter a different person peering back at me from the mirror every day after I hang up my blow dryer.

As I was formulating this rant, I searched for a recognizable celebrity that I could point to and say, "That’s the haircut I got." At first, I thought Debra Winger in Urban Cowboy.

Nope…that was more of a longish, curly cowgirl thing. Okay…Sally field in Smokey and the Bandit.  No, no…that wasn’t quite it either. How about Jennifer Beals in Flashdance. Dream on, old girl…. It came to me last Friday when I was trying on new glasses after my optometrist appointment. On a lark, I tested out a pair of aviator frames. And there she was, staring back at me from the mirror…Billie Jean King. From right around the time of the Bobby Riggs Tennis Battle of the Sexes thing.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I admire and respect Ms. King for her unrivaled contributions to women’s sports; but let’s face it. She didn’t exactly cultivate the mystique that this forty-something queen of hot flashes is burning to emulate.  Anna Kournikova, maybe.  But not Billie Jean King.  The thing is, if I can’t look like Julia Roberts, I’d rather just look like me. Unfortunately, it looks like even me is too much to hope for these days…