Flipping My Wig

Two hours and forty minutes getting my hair cut and colored today. It always starts out ok. I exchange pleasant small talk with the young, pretty, impeccably dressed and, of course, beautifully coiffed stylist as she glops the reddish brown dye on my graying roots. We discuss how quickly my grays come in near my right temple. Two weeks later! She suggests I switch the side I part my hair on, thereby masking the gray a little longer. I agree to try it.

While I am processing, I read an article in Vogue by a woman who, at 70, has decided to stop the coloring madness. Her once rich brown hair is now all-white. Keeping up with the white roots is near impossible. So she decides to go through the process of having the blonde dye bleached out until her hair is a dazzling white. The results are fabulous, we learn. No picture of the writer is included, this being Vogue. Instead there is a large image of a 47-year-old model looking amazing with long gray hair.

Three fashion magazines later, my dye is rinsed, and toner and a color lock are applied. Then the blow drying. When it is done, my natural wave disappears and a glossy approximation of the color I was born with is revealed. My hair color was once my best feature. When I was a senior in high school, a college professor of my father described my thick blown out hair as "opulent." That was vaguely creepy, but when I got compliments on my hair color then, I barely noticed them. Now, when I get a compliment, I feel weird saying "thank you" because the color is fake, all fake. And it makes me realize that everyone else knows that it's bought and paid for.

My stylist starts cutting. By now I am starving for my lunch. I have a blood sugar thing. I can't tolerate being the slightest bit hungry. I long to be out of this chair and eating a grilled swiss on rye.

A woman I know, who had been coloring her white hair its original black, cut her hair super-short to rid herself of the monthly task. I thought she had never looked chicer or more beautiful with her short silvery style. My hair, however, is not all white, just tinged here and there with gray. I don't imagine I would look as lovely. And truly, I am lucky, since my grays only came in a few years ago, when I was in my late forties. So I have only been dealing with this time and money suck for a relatively short period.

The trim complete, I pay the exorbitant fee (but cheap compared to Manhattan), tip the talented, patient professionals, and head out the door looking much more polished, I guess, than when I came in. Part of me thinks my done hair looks a bit like a wig, or maybe doll's hair. In a way, it's aging, the contrast between the perfect hair and the slightly lined face. Someday, I will have to stop this. I'll accept that I'm not young anymore, and embrace my hair they way it grows out of my head. Not yet, though. Last month, not even a migraine stopped me from keeping my appointment.

At home, I look in the mirror and notice a glop of hair dye sitting near my hairline. I scrub away at it, but the evidence remains.

Living in a Barbie World

I didn't want to think about the woman whose life goal is to be a human Barbie. When a Facebook friend posted a link about this creature earlier this week, I learned that [name redacted]  devotes long hours and copious amounts of energy into making herself resemble the plastic doll. She's being discussed on the internet this week because of a newly released photo shoot and interview with V Magazine. I won't post her pictures here because they are too disturbing. I looked at them against my better judgment. Seriously, I wish I could unsee that shit. Instead, let's have a picture of my Malibu Barbie from the 70s, dressed in the lovely dress I knitted for her when I was 10.

Malibu B. sure is a woman on the go, walking across my windowsill. She is cute, and fun to dress, but I wouldn't want to turn myself into her. Because, she is, you know, plastic. And can't walk by herself. Or wear flats. Or talk.

The Barbie-emulating woman, I learned from the interview, which I read even though I don't want to think about her, practices astral body projection or some shit. This is a telling detail. After all the energy expended into torturing her physical body, she wants to get out of it.

Once, in college, I was having a conversation at a bar with a guy I worked with on the school newspaper. Giving my thigh a squeeze, he said, "For all of your feminist rhetoric, you really are just a Barbie doll of a girl." It was a confusing moment. I didn't know how to handle this insult wrapped in a compliment wrapped in an insult. On the one hand, I had been attracted to this guy for years and was thrilled that he finally seemed to be reciprocating. On the other hand, "staunch feminist" was a core part of my identity, so his words made me furious. Especially this one: "just." "JUST a Barbie doll of a girl." Nothing much of consequence. You know, I might say I had all these opinions, but the physical evidence was to the contrary. I wish I could tell you that I decimated him with my rhetorical skills before throwing a drink in his face and stalking out.

No, I did not leave. Or argue. Not at all. I can still conjure my 21-year-old self in that bar: the darkness of the room, the lateness of the hour, my black tights and Esprit mini, my soul sliding out of my ass. I don't want to think about that any more than I want to think about the lady in V Magazine. Instead, let's regard B. in some 1970s issue mismatched hostess pajamas. She looks like an extra from The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Fabulous.

Demented Product of the Day: The Pig in a Blanket

Hand painted polyresin sculpture with Scottish wool scarf, $850.

The Lament of the Stay-at-Home Mom: Cat Poop Edition

What do stay-at-home moms do all day?
Here is one answer for you people:
My cat
(the one with a habit of defecating outside the box)
had excrement coating her hind legs.
So I chased her from room to room
wielding a wet paper towel,
for the delicate hazmat operation.

It wasn't easy.
The poop is adhering to her fur.
Because of an earlier encounter with a sticker.
There is no one to whom I could delegate this job.
And so it goes.

A Small Parenting Victory

My daughter doesn't know who Kim Kardashian is.

"Mommy, who is Kim Kardashian?" she asked. "Is she a tennis player?"

My husband and I high-fived each other with our brains, and said in unison, "No, honey, you must mean Kim Clijsters." We went on about how admirable Clijsters is. "She is a professional tennis player and a mom, and she retired for the second time this year." (The second sentence was not spoken in unison.)

Yay, Kim Clijsters!

We never even had to explain anything about the Kim whose name we do not speak.

She'll find out eventually, but not from us. 

Embarrassing Photo of the Day

The year was 1989. I thought it would be a good idea to get a spiral perm the day before this photo was taken. I was modeling for Sassy Club, a merchandising page in which the magazine sold things like the kit that was used to paint that flower on my face. Staff members took turns modeling the stuff. At the shoot where this frightening photo was taken, I was also photographed in a pair of gray bike shorts that very clearly showed my private parts. Someone in the art department must have been mad at me when they selected that photo for publication. That other photo, the one I am not publishing here, makes this one look positively respectable. By the way, I don't know if you can see, but my eyebrows are crazily darkened.

I used to carry this around in my Filofax (remember those?) and pull it out whenever there was a lull in the conversation or I thought the mood needed lightening. Now I kind of feel like there's been a lull, AND the mood needs lightening.

So there you go.

Malled

Yesterday, while Lena Dunham was finalizing her $3.5 million book deal,  maybe popping champagne corks or eating cake naked on the toilet, I was at the Willowbrook Mall.

Oh joy. I prefer to never leave Montclair, except to go to Paris; however, there are certain things that cannot be purchased in Montclair, such as a suit of clothes for a 12-year-old boy attending a Bat Mitzvah.  And so, we went to the mall. As far as malls go, this one is really depressing, but sometimes one has to suck it up and drive past the hideous parade of chain stores on Route 46 and land in Wayne.

We got our son the dress clothes, plus a pair of Sambas and a nutritious Popeyes lunch to sweeten the deal. Our daughter, whose fully-loaded wardrobe wants for nothing, asked to go into Justice. We had never stepped foot in a Justice, but she's been begging to go there for a couple of years. She had waited semi-patiently, so I acquiesced. The racks were crammed with sparkly, scratchy, complete and utter crap. It made the Kardashian Kollection that we had just walked past at Sears look like Chanel.

I endured a few minutes of browsing under the migraine-triggering florescent light. But when Violet asked for a metallic, zebra-print sports bra, I grabbed her hand, and stalked out. "These are the ugliest clothes I have ever seen in my life," I said (and my standards are fairly low). I felt bad for dissing the fashion she claims "everybody" has, within earshot of the sales staff, no less, but I do have my limits. And also, I like to reinforce that one does not have to do things just because "everybody" does them. If you don't need the tacky Justice wardrobe, then it follows that you don't need to take performance enhancing drugs just because "everybody" is taking them to do better in high school. Nor do you need whatever disturbing body modification the other kids are getting in college. Yes? No? You tell me.

Glasses,  $11.50 at Claire's; sports bra, $12 with 40% off coupon at Justice

Anyway, Violet was miffed, but perked up when I agreed to step inside Claire's, which carries the trendy, shoddy accessories to complement a Justice wardrobe. She held up suspenders printed with moustaches. I smiled falsely but declined to purchase them. A plastic moustache was suspended from the frames of a pair of fake black glasses. She tried them on happily. I laughed, but I wasn't laying out the cash.

I am both mystified and intrigued by the viral moustache fad amongst Vi's 9-year-old friends. They don't know why they love the things; they just do. It seems to be the 2012 version of Silly Bands. The arch moustache cultivation of 20-something hipsters has trickled down to an enthusiastic embrace by the pre-ironic fourth grader. Hipsters everywhere must be shaving their moustaches, which, I think, is good news for the girls that age. But maybe not. I no longer pretend to understand the tastes of the youth. We have Lena Dunham for that job. I just sit here and watch Masterpiece Classic.