I grew up in the 80’s with Madonna, Tiffany, Hair Metal. Big hair was everywhere and I wanted in on it. Unfortunately for me, I’d inherited my mother’s fine hair and had no chance of ever achieving the volume or height of Big Hair naturally. My decade-long spiral perm was probably the only time in my childhood that I put that level of commitment and effort into something.
My hair was my hobby and my biggest asset.
This resulted in a period of about 8 years when I had a perpetual burn on the upper right portion of my forehead, just below my hairline. I can pinpoint the location so clearly because despite styling my bangs in an elevated wall-like cliff, I felt that working with my “natural” part-line was essential, which shifted my Mt Everest bangs to the right portion of my forehead.
Logic may have you wondering why if there was such an effort to have my bangs reach as high and far away from my forehead as I described, my forehead would be burned at all. I don’t really have a good answer for you. When I think about it now, I too wonder what curling my bangs had to do with my “wall-o-bangs” but I can tell you that it did.
What’s interesting to note about my hairstyle in those years is that I paired my sheer wall of bangs with a spiral perm. My request to the hairdresser was always “Spiral perm please. Hold the bangs.” The pairing of the two styles was questionable: the top end rigid from vigorous back-combing and half of a can of Aquanet against a cascade of tights curls and split ends that ended halfway down my back.
I felt like a lioness when I tossed that contradictory mane of hair.
You may also be wondering how I paid for such a luxury at 14 years old. I was lucky enough to be raised before the attachment and helicopter parent era so if I wanted anything that wasn’t handed down or free, I needed a job. I spent the summer of my fourteenth year as a dishwasher at the local summer camp for sea cadets. Five days a week I rode my bike down to HMCS Quadra at Goose Spit for my shift to serve and clean up food that was made in vats in a steaming industrial kitchen.
Cadets, or “sea lice” as we called them, would line up in the mess hall and hold their plate out to be served. Along with washing dishes, it was my job to serve each cadet a spoonful of powdered mashed potatoes or mystery meat. I remember the slick of grease on my skin after a shift and also the worry I felt in the shower knowing that with each shampoo of my perm, my curls were loosening. The grease and steam did nothing positive for my acne.
On breaks, I would sit at the outdoor picnic table in my starched white uniform with the rest of the cooking staff drinking coffee and smoking. There was a clear divide amongst the staff; some were pimply-faced, middle-class teeny bops like me who needed the job to pay for the finer things in life that their parents couldn’t justify in the recession. The rest of the crew were the kind of people who frequented cash advance services. Their leathery skin, raspy voices and varying degrees of dentition revealed difficult lives. They needed the job for their livelihood not their hairstyle.
One afternoon, after spending hours at the salon to get my “permanent”, I arrived at my friend’s house for a visit. We were sprucing up our locks in preparation for our night out when she observed that one half of my hair was lying near flat against my head. Staring back at me was a paradox; I was one half my truest limp-haired self and the other half, the voluminous hair goddess I so desperately wanted to be.
At this chemical crossroads I would like to think that I contemplated giving it all up; the job, the perms and the need to be liked, and return to my natural self. In reality, I was a shallow, acceptance-seeking teenager who was spending a disproportionate around of time thinking about my hair and pimples.
The following day I marched in my little white Keds back to the salon to repeat the tiresome and stinky process of re-perming the right side of my head. Thankfully, in the 90’s celebrities started cutting off their hair and so I, of course, followed suit.
I’m a mother now and from time to time I burn myself. The scars on my arms from oven burns reveal that I now have other hobbies and interests beyond my hair. My hair has changed with age and along with turning grey, it has developed a soft wave requiring a straightening iron to smooth it out. And while I no longer burn my forehead, every so often I touch the heat of the iron to my fingers or neck and I am taken back. I am 14 again; the ocean wind in my long, tight curls as I pedal to my summer job. I am beautiful. I am free. I have the hair I’ve always dreamed of and it’s worth every minimum wage cent.