AUTHOR: Sheri Lynch TITLE: Crown and Glory! DATE: 1/17/2005 04:17:00 PM ----- BODY:

I was born with a head full of dark, thick, unruly hair. My earliest memory is of sitting at our kitchen table and crying as my mother struggled to brush it. No matter how she tried to keep it smooth, it couldn't wait to return to its natural state of tangled knots and snarls. It would not be tamed. She tried everything: ponytails yanked so tight they gave me headaches, pigtails pulled high enough to pass for donkey ears, barrettes pinned to my scalp like thumbtacks. One day, sick to death of my sobs and screams at the sight of the hairbrush, she marched me off to the beauty parlor and told the hairdresser to cut it all off. I came home sporting a pixie that day, which changed my appearance so dramatically that it prompted my grandmother to openly mourn my lost splendor and my father to blow a gasket. For me, it was blissful freedom. No more tangles, no more brushing, no more awful, excruciating ponytails. I could play all day and even go swimming without ever having to worry about the brushing to come. It didn't take me long to understand at some basic level though, that the price of this amazing new freedom was beauty. Everyone who saw me -- except for my mother -- gasped in horror and exclaimed at my sudden ugliness. They were all furious with her over my new ‘do. "What have you done to her hair?" they'd roar, as though she were guilty of some unspeakable crime. No one wanted to hear about my tangles or tears. It was as if my hair, which truly had been a glorious mass of shining waves, belonged to everyone but me. I was simply its resting place -- and its slave. Growing up in an extended family of petite, ultra-feminine women who genuinely enjoy makeup, jewelry, and heels presents a real challenge for any tomboy. I not only didn't want to be dainty and careful -- I was incapable of being dainty and careful. I wasn't happy wearing fancy dresses. They itched. I hated dress-up shoes. Tights made me frantic. I couldn't bear to feel my clothing biting into my waist or binding my arms. I tugged waistbands down below my hips, and pulled at sleeves and necklines to stretch them out. Tucking a blouse in was out of the question; the short-lived fad for bodysuits that snapped at the crotch nearly drove me out of my young mind. Even my socks had to be loose or I'd banish them to a hiding spot at the bottom of the closet. By age six, I consented to wear the jumper dresses my mom sewed for me in a rare fit of domesticity only because they hung like cheerful plaid sacks and left me free to move. This mania for comfort didn't always sit well, especially with my beloved Aunt Rosemary who liked nothing better than purchasing adorable, precious, darling little outfits for me to wear. Once encased in the tight, scratchy, or fussy ensemble, I'd fidget miserably, which only led to creases and wrinkles. And inevitably, I'd get into something dirty and ruin the whole effect. I was in my twenties before I gave in and became a girly girl. It was rough going at first. Years of school uniforms had spared me the daily agonies over what to wear, but hadn't really prepared me to dress myself in something completely different every single day. I approached clothing as though it were a costume. There was the thrift store period, during which I mixed vintage 1950's cocktail dresses with combat boots and denim jackets. That was followed by a brief love affair with my grandfather's old Navy uniforms -- the work chinos, not the dress blues. I combined these with men's boxers, concert t-shirts, and high-top sneakers. I then entered my Black Phase, an era marked by gloomy shrouds and no lip gloss. My hair wasn't spared any of this experimentation. I grew it out, chopped it off, grew it out again, soaked fistfuls of it in Clorox, dyed it black, red, and every shade of brown on the shelves at the drugstore. In all of this, I wasn't really searching for anything in particular. Mostly, I just wanted to avoid pantyhose, ruffles, pastels, and anything that suggested sugar and spice. I ran screaming from the cutesy, fled in horror from the delicate, and shunned anything beribboned or bowed. These days, compared to the tomboy I was, I'm practically a Barbie doll. I wear heels, and the color pink, and cute little jackets, and jewelry and lip gloss and perfume. But I won't tuck in, and I won't wear pantyhose. Ruffles are forbidden, even on curtains. And please don't threaten me with hair bows -- it's like waving garlic at a vampire. I can't endure it. The irony is, my husband, who has always been attracted to tomboys and has never dated a true Fembot, thinks he's married to a prissy cupcake. Little does he know that there's a whole world of women out there who won't be seen without makeup, who match their bags to their shoes, and who would never, ever be caught dead at the grocery store wearing pajama bottoms and a tank top. I try to tell him that compared to an authentic girly girl, I'm a drag queen. But he just points to my shelf full of handbags, my rows and rows of shoes, and the bin full of hair styling goop under the sink and shakes his head in reproachful silence. It just proves that no matter who you are, you can always find someone who thinks you're a princess. Here's the best part: with no coaching or prompting from me, my daughter Olivia is following right in my footsteps. She yanks at her waistbands. She pulls on her sleeves. She tugs at her collars. Sweaters are a lost cause unless they're as soft and light as a feather. She has gone so far as to throw herself, sobbing, facedown on the floor in protest of being made to wear her jacket zipped up. Her hair, so thick and shiny and streaked with gold that I stare at it and think: surely, my work here on earth is complete, is something that Olivia is particularly adamant about. She will not, under any circumstances, permit a ponytail or a set of pigtails to adorn her head. A barrette or two might be allowed, providing that we don't try anything too fancy. As a result, her hair at the end of each day has been like an archaeological site. Whatever activities she's been involved in, whatever she's eaten, can easily be gleaned from a quick brushing. Paint, sand, Play-Doh, pizza sauce, maple syrup, peanut butter -- you name it, and we're sure to find it stuck in her hair. It happened in the middle of a bad brushing, Olivia wailing, me wrestling with a vicious, tangled knot. Suddenly it hit me: my baby was crying over her hair. And I knew what I had to do. I made an appointment, and three days later, Olivia climbed into the salon chair for her first real haircut. Not a pixie, because times have changed, and I like to at least hope that I've learned a little something from my mother's mistakes. Picking up her scissors, Le bent down and looked Olivia in the eye. "Ready?" she asked. Olivia nodded. I switched on the video camera. Fifteen minutes later, my little girl stood up and turned to admire her very first beveled blunt cut. She looked so pretty, and so grown up that I couldn't speak for a moment. For her part, she stared in the mirror with obvious amazement and delight. In the days that have followed, she's been tangle-free and thoroughly pleased at having successfully vanquished her archenemy, the hairbrush. It's been a victory for both of us. Olivia will have to figure out what sort of a girl she is, and that's a journey that can take a lifetime. I'm still plodding along. There will always be things I don't understand, like how certain women can maintain a manicure without forever chipping the polish or breaking their nails. And then there are the deeper mysteries of femininity, the questions about identity and the soul, and finding your place in the world. I wish I had those answers for my daughters. I wish I had them for myself. But I do know this: it's a whole lot easier to find the way once that hair is out of your eyes.

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