Thursday, July 13, 2017

The Bigger the Hair, the Closer to God

*I bought this sweater at Foxmoor Casuals in the Capitola Mall with babysitting money.

In 1978, the summer before ninth grade, I made a trip to my mom's hometown in the panhandle of Texas. I hung out with some local teenage girls who were beauty queens. Miss Borger, and Miss West Texas Panhandle were beautiful girls with big, beautiful, Texas beauty pageant hairstyles. I wanted to look just like them. While I was there, I got a layered haircut, a plastic box of hot rollers, and a fresh can of Aqua Net.  The results were not tiara-worthy.

When I got back to California, I spent the mornings before school, fighting my hair with a giant round brush while trying not to burn the tops of my ears with the spiky rollers. Every day by third period, regardless of the thick shellac covering my head, the big, bouncy curls wilted in the fog of my seaside hometown. I lived in the wrong territory for hair that was, as my mom would say, "bigger than Dallas."





4 comments: