Bangled, Tangled, Spangled and Spaghettied!

Gimme a head with hair, Long beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming. steaming, flaxen, waxen

Gimme down to there hair
Shoulder length or longer
Here baby, there Mama, everywhere Daddy Daddy

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Flow it. .Show it.
Long as God can grow it! My Hair!

The revival of Hair is moving from Broadway to the West End next week and I so want to see it.  Reviews indicate that it has survived the years and seems particularly relevant today even though the few seconds of nudity are no longer shocking.

I saw the original production in New York sometime around 1970.  I thought I was so cool.  I went to a Broadway theatre in my ragged bellbottoms, a t-shirt with no bra (not that it mattered that much), my hair in braids and barefoot.  EEWWW!!!!  Barefoot on the streets of New York.  Even at 15, what was I thinking??

When the cast entered from the rear of the theatre and tumbled, jumped and swung from scaffolds into the audience and then onto the stage, one of the cast members stopped in front of my seat and handed me a daisy.  Obviously he did that because I was clearly one of the coolest people in the room.   At least I was able to hold on to that fantasy for oh a couple of days until I returned home from Model UN and realized how totally impossible it was to be cool when living in a small Southern town and leaving three days later for church camp and going into 11th grade in a school that didn’t even require that we read Catcher in the Rye or anything by Kurt Vonnegut.  I bought a book of poems by Lawrence Ferlingetti while I was in NYC and that was the only tiny little element of coolness I retained.  I pressed the daisy between the pages of that book.

Since we’re talking about hair I must admit that I have never had cool hair.  The closest I ever came was not too many years ago when I cut it off very very short and died it red.  That sort of spiky look appealed to the slight personal rebellion I was trying to mount after leaving my job.  But when we started traveling, David asked that I grow it out. I tried for a while and then cut it again and he asked again.

 What is it with men and long hair?  I would suggest  some sort of connection with short hair and homophobia if I hadn’t started writing this post about a bunch of long haired hippy freaks  - and the fact that  David sued the Commandant of the Marine Corps over the hair regulations - and lived to tell about it (He won the lawsuit BTW) and I have photos of him with long hair in the 1070’s so it must be some sort of hangover from that time which probably also explains why I gave in and let it grow.  Well, that and I have always thought grandmothers with hair long enough for their grandchildren to braid were kind of cool in an 80-year-old gray-haired sort of way.  But Toby swears he is never having kids and Tavish has too many things to do before he even starts to think about it (and I think those are good and proper attitudes for both of them)  And my hair is growing so slowly that it may never reach my shoulders much less hang down my back in a braid.

In the meantime, my hair is thin, fine, stringy, styless and as far as I’m concerned, just plain ugly.  David compliments me on it frequently, I think more to keep me from cutting it than because he really thinks it looks good just now - or perhaps he looks at me through the memories of our early years together when my hair was long, my face was a lot less wrinkled, my butt was a lot, well, narrower and I still had my real boobs.

While, as I said, my hair has never been my best feature, I think some of my current hair issues are related to living in Scotland.  There is a commercial on the telly  with a woman in a red dress wearing 5-inch stilettos  that she clearly can’t walk in.  I know she can’t walk in those shoes because she is photographed lying on her stomach with her feet kicked up in the air behind her, never standing - of course, this also provides a nice view of her ample cleavage and she is talking in a posh Scottish accent about how when you live in Scotland your hair is dull, limp and lifeless.  Apparently the water is very soft and certain expensive hair products are required if I want my hair to look like hers.

 I am sorry but ever since I read an interview with Kristin Chenoweth where she admitted she never appears in public unless she has at least THREE hairpieces pinned in because apparently she has dull, limp and lifeless Scottish hair, even though she lives in the US… anyway, ever since I read that I do not believe for one minute that the women in hair product ads have hair that looks at all in real life like it does in the commercials.  I want to see one of  those women just after she has walked in out of  the rain or, better yet, when she first wakes up in the morning.

I stood in front of the mirror this afternoon and contemplated cutting my hair again.  I had just showered, shampooed and completed the blow dry and my hair still hung there - dull, limp and lifeless - but I decided that at least it was there since very short, dull, limp and lifeless hair would only make me look like a crazy old lady who doesn‘t care anymore. SO, tomorrow I am going to buy some of that stuff the “we girls in Scotland need to have full, beautiful, bouncy hair.”  I hope it works without the stilettos.