The New Rules for Blondes (8 page)

Many people flinch at this laundry list of hair products. The words “hair spray” make them picture a cheesy girl with giant “mall bangs,” a New Kids on the Block T-shirt, and pegged jeans circa 1990. But hair spray can be quite useful, and it should not have a horrible connotation. In fact, contrary to popular belief, putting product in your hair is a good thing because it coats the shaft and protects your hair from hot styling implements such as curlers and irons. With a few exceptions, hair products such as gel and mousse shouldn’t be applied to dry hair or you’ll end up with sticky, gunk-filled locks. You can do a lot of useful hair product application during that precious and precarious witching hour when the hair is still damp, before you use the blow-dryer. Applying gel or mousse during this window of opportunity, while hair is still damp, will give you the body that you crave but permit movement and bounce.

I just got lost in a mystical window—where were we? Oh yes, fresh out of the shower with a wet head of tangles. Perfect. After you brush through your hair, you may wish to spray it with a bit of water or wet your hands and run them through your hair if your hair air-dries insanely quickly, as mine does. I know that it seems counterintuitive to towel-dry, then re-wet your hair, but just trust me: I’m a genius with dope hair. Once the hair is untangled and damp, you should put some gel on the palm of your hand (a quarter-size drop at minimum) and run it through your hair to coat the shaft and add body and thickness. If you have accidentally overconditioned your hair, use more gel than normal. You also can use mousse, if you prefer that. Then you might wish to use a root boost spray or a spray gel on the roots. This ensures that the weight given to the rest of the hair (from the gel that you just applied) won’t weigh down the roots—they will be boosted up, too. Like a Wonderbra for your dope hair. As far as specific products or labels, I’m no snob. I generally use any L.A. Looks gel—they come in an assortment of colors (fear not—the funky color of the gel doesn’t show up on the actual hair) and all are good. Also, Garnier Fructis has some fantastic products, and Herbal Essences has some wonderful shampoos, conditioners, and products—their Body Envy mousse is a personal fave.

If you are a bronzer addict like me, at this point you might want to clip up your hair off your face and back (I recommend a small hair clip with plastic or rubber texturing on the inside edges of the clip as it gently grips wet, slippery hair) so that now you can apply lotion to your body, and a nice bronzer cream/lotion mix to your face. It’s quite a ritual. Once that bronzer cream/lotion mixture has had a bit of time to sink in, feel free to take your damp hair down to let it air-dry a bit. But not too much. Don’t go calling a friend during that window of time because it’s a very limited phase and you can’t be yammering. The hair is drying, but you cannot let it dry completely or all your hair work will be for naught.

Once your damp hair has dried a bit, it’s time to blow-dry. My best friend, Suzanne, somehow managed to get a wicked case of carpal tunnel syndrome from blow-drying her hair. No joke. She saw her doctor to get to the bottom of it, and he was able to identify the offending behavior that was causing her wrist problems. He had some wise words that we all should heed: When you’re blow-drying your hair and you have the dryer in one hand and a brush in the other, keep them moving around the head. Don’t get stuck in one spot doing the same motion continuously. In this way, blow-drying isn’t unlike childhood bike riding: safety first. Everyone has his or her own way to blow-dry—some people separate the hair into sections to isolate the sections that they are working on, other people only blow-dry with their heads upside-down, others start with their bangs and move back, and still others start at the back and work their way forward. All are correct. Much like the Hard Rock mantra of “Love all, serve all,” when it comes to blow-drying your hair, “Love all, dry all (strands of sweet hair).” I personally start at the back and bottom and get that settled, then work my way up and forward. The toughest section is the hair that frames the face. Cowlicks can muck things up, and it’s often hard to get the hair to point where you want it to point and hang how you want it to hang, right off the ol’ dome piece. When I’m blow-drying, I simply focus on getting the hair dry and straight, and I leave the specific styling and pointing of hair to later.

“Later” comes quickly when you have fine hair, so now it’s styling time. At this point, when the hair is completely dry, gel and mousse are verboten but a touch of hair spray and styling wax is permitted. Part your hair how you wish to part it (I love a good diagonal side part—a flattering look on most and a nice way to balance things), then lock in the style by giving it a quick spritz with hair spray from an aerosol can. I know, I know, environmentalist blondes reading this book are thinking,
She’s a terrible person, and aerosol cans are the devil.
Aerosol cans cause rips in the ozone layer, and this jerk is slowly killing our planet because she needs to lock in style.
Don’t blame me! Blame the scientists who have yet to create a hair spray application device that is as good as aerosol but without the environmental repercussions! You just can’t beat the light spray that an aerosol can emits.

Earlier I mentioned styling wax. It’s not just for the boys and the lesbians anymore! Styling wax should be used in moderation because a little goes a long-assed way. Don’t make the same mistake that I did when I first dabbled in styling wax and apply it to wet hair post-shower. Again, that damp time is for mousse, gel, and root boost spray, but not for hair spray or styling wax. If you apply styling wax when the hair is damp, your hair will dry and look filthy all over again. Styling wax’s purpose is to control hair and rein in flyaways at the final step of styling. I use a dab of styling wax if I’m parting my hair for an updo or pigtails and if I have flyaways that I need to smooth down. Be warned, though: Styling wax can be quite thick and heavy, and you should only use a pinch between your fingers and apply it to a specific spot. If you have flyaways all over and need to smooth things out (perhaps you didn’t use enough conditioner and/or it’s wintertime), don’t use styling wax in this situation. It’s too heavy for all-head application. In this circumstance, I used to use a product called Secret Weapon, but it was discontinued a few years back. That was what I call my own personal D-Day (discontinuation day), and it was a dark day for both me and Suzanne, who was hooked on Secret Weapon, too. You can replicate the effect of Secret Weapon with any old hand or body lotion. I learned this trick from some black friends who swear by it to smooth their flyaways.
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Simply squeeze a bit of lotion onto your hands and rub them together; then, once the lotion has dissolved a bit but while it’s still somewhat tacky, gingerly run your hands either over your hair (if it’s parted) or through it (if you’re foregoing a part and shooting for a loose style that you will toss around).

But that’s just my system—yours might be quite different. I have a blonde friend who possesses super-thick hair and needs to slather on conditioner before spending twenty minutes with a high-intensity hair dryer. I have another pal who conditions and combs her hair in the shower, then must carefully let it air-dry and cannot run a comb or brush through it once it has dried. You’ll want to conduct your own experiments to find what works for your hair, and explore different hair products using trial by fire.

For quick reference, let’s recap the hair jargon we just learned:

• Underlying pigment: the color of virgin, or never-colored, hair
  
• Porosity of hair: how well hair will absorb and hold color
  
• Developer: the liquid used to open up a cuticle of hair and activate color
  
• 1-to-10 continuum: the way that colorists chart natural hair colors, with 1 being the darkest and 10 being the lightest
  
• Special Blondes/Special 12s: platinum blondes, a color that doesn’t occur in nature
  
• 11: the level that Spinal Tap’s amplifiers crank up to, oddly not a position on the hair color continuum
  
• Single process: a uniform color that is spread across all hair (mostly used for dark hair, red hair, and gray coverage)
  
• Double process: when a single process must be administered twice in order to remove old color and achieve new color (mostly used for platinum blondes)
  
• Chemical cut: severe hair breakage caused by overprocessing
  
• Hot roots: when the roots are brighter and more vibrant than the rest of the shaft
  
• Cool (ashy): blonde that is platinum or silvery—also called Upper East Side blonde
  
• Warm (brassy): blonde that is yellow or golden—also called California blonde
  
• Color removal: a process that can be done at home or in the salon, when a hair color is stripped from your hair—used only in hair color emergencies
  
• Highlights/lowlights: painted pieces of hair that are either lighter than the rest of the hair (highlights) or darker than rest of hair (lowlights) and add dimension
  
• Full foil: when highlights are painted on and sealed with foil packets across the entire head
  
• Partial foil: when highlights are painted on and sealed with foil packets, but only from crown to ears
  
• T-section foil: when highlights are painted on and sealed with foil packets, but only on the top and sides of head
  
• Starburst foil: when highlights are painted on and sealed with five to seven foil packets on the top of the head
  
• Purple shampoo: used to counteract brassiness in hair that has been colored blonde
  
• Good products: gel, mousse, hair spray, root boost spray, L.A. Looks gel, Garnier Fructis, Herbal Essences’ Body Envy line, hair clips, styling wax
  

That’s a comprehensive overview of in-salon color, at-home color, and at-home styling. Phew. I hope that you have learned something new courtesy of the trained professional, Michael, and the hair-obsessed writer, me. I shall close this chapter with one word of advice: When it comes to styling, no tendrils. Dear Lord, no tendrils—ever. Please. If you’re thinking,
What is she talking about? What are tendrils?
, then I assume that you never attended a wedding or prom in the 1980s or 1990s, and you should consider yourself lucky. For the blissfully unaware, tendrils are pieces of hair (usually framing the face) that are deliberately left out of an updo to make the look appear less severe. They are often curled (by cheesy people) in a very small barrel curling iron so that those few strands ostensibly frame the face. Unfortunately, these tendrils fail in their mission to frame the face and instead make the wearer look like a grape arbor, with errant crap dangling down like vines or bougainvillea. It’s not a hot look on anyone, but especially not on blondes—I expect more from you.

CHAPTER 8

RULE:
Don’t Try This at Home: A Cautionary Tale

D
olly Parton’s character in
Steel Magnolias
put it best: “I don’t trust anyone who does their own hair. I don’t think it’s natural.” Certain types of ablutions and personal care cannot and should not be self-administered at home. These include back massages (you can’t give yourself a back massage, no matter how much you brag about your flexibility thanks to yoga), plastic surgery (not even if you find yourself in an Aron Ralston–
127 Hours
situation), and most hair color changes. All thoughts of at-home hair color change should be accompanied by a helpful public service announcement: Don’t try this at home. The only hair coloring that can be successfully self-administered at home is a single process (which I discussed in Chapter 7) used for darker hair (gray coverage), redheads, or completely uniform color. Otherwise, heed the advice of the guys in
Jackass
, and don’t try this at home.

There was a time when I swore by self-administered, at-home hair color. This time was called “when I was broke and didn’t quite know how hair color worked.” This segment of my life overlapped with my first year after college, when I lived in Chicago and earned a pittance while working as a paralegal in the grayest office ever. It was an office so bland and drab and gray that I wondered if the partners had taken the set of
Office Space
and spent a small fortune moving it from a soundstage to Chicago. I had been drawn to the lovely city on the lake because my sister Laurel was living there and it had (and has) a bustling comedy community. My dreams of improv comedy brilliance were dashed by an exhausting work schedule that left me without enough energy to do much more than eat dinner and fall asleep after work.

In most offices, the employees who occupy the lower-level jobs band together and become a friendly team. They are brothers-in-arms pitted against the wholly out-of-touch and usually moronic higher-ups who make business decisions with no idea how anything will actually trickle down to the client or customer level. At almost every job I’ve ever had, I’ve made fast friends and gotten along swimmingly with all of my coworkers. During high school summer vacations, I’d serve as the token white girl in a Boston law firm’s mailroom, where I quickly became buddies with everyone. We’d crack jokes, listen to dancehall reggae music by Beenie Man played far too loudly (not my choice), and keep our eyes open for free leftover food in the conference rooms. During the academic year in high school, I worked as a sandwich maker at Bruegger’s Bagels in downtown Weston (blink and you’ll miss “downtown” Weston). Again, I was pals with everybody—managers, fellow sandwich makers, and even the troll-like guys who were there just to cook the bagels in a giant cauldron. At that job, I initiated a fun game called “the Hottie Tally” wherein we would keep a record of how many hot guys came in each day. Our record was a mere three—not much talent in downtown Weston’s foot traffic, sadly. I’ve fit in at every job I’ve had except one: at that damn law firm job in Chicago.

I was a paralegal, which was just a way of saying “administrative assistant” that made you feel like you hadn’t just wasted four years studying English literature at a liberal arts college. The salary for this job was about half of what it cost to attend my college for one year. So after paying rent and a few bills, I was perpetually broke. Like a stray cat (minus the strut), I was living on hard-boiled eggs and cans of tuna. The paralegal gig paid horribly, and even worse, my coworkers seemed to hate me, thanks to one girl at the firm. Kristy had been the “cute blonde” at the office until I arrived and unwittingly dethroned her. My apologies. I have great hair and tolerable features: I was born this way.
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Kristy wasn’t doing much to earn the title of “cute blonde,” but as the only blonde at the firm she was, by default, the cute one, I suppose. This same logic can be used to declare Latvia the most developed and stable of the Baltic states. It’s still not saying much.

Nonetheless, blonde “cutie” Kristy definitely would have benefitted from a root boost spray (sprayed on while the hair was still wet, of course), a bit of gel (to coat the shaft and build body), and a good blow-dry. But I wasn’t about to share my gems of hair brilliance with her. Not after how she treated me.

Kristy took it upon herself to organize paralegal outings to a nearby bar after work on Fridays. This would happen with enough regularity that it didn’t take long before I realized that I was being left out by her, perhaps deliberately and very frequently. I hate to pull out the pithy “don’t hate me because I’m beautiful” line, but seriously, gurl, don’t hate. On me. Because of my dope weave. I’d like to give you some tips if you’d stop blatantly excluding me and pretending that you don’t care about me. The opposite of love isn’t hate, Kristy; it’s disinterest.

Fortunately, I had one ally at the office: Dmitry, the Russian paralegal who collected kitsch. Dmitry’s cube was filled with ripped-out magazine pictures of Liza Minnelli and David Gest’s wedding (specifically the photo in which they are flanked by Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor), posters of kittens, macramé crafts, and other such oddities. The no-nonsense black woman from Chicago’s South Side who served as our office assistant was completely bewildered by Dmitry’s cube, but I loved it. His cube cracked me up, he cracked me up, and he had my back. Thank God I had him because, thanks to Kristy’s manipulations, I wasn’t exactly winning the company popularity contest. Almost every day, Dmitry and I would eat lunch together in the conference room and troubleshoot the latest office gossip. Dmitry had moved back in with his parents (to the suburbs north of Chicago) after college, so he’d spend lunchtime munching on his traditional Russian food prepared by his mother. I’d chow on my lunch, which consisted of a tuna salad sandwich (brought from home because I was broke), Doritos (also brought from home because it’s cheaper to divide up a big bag of Doritos than it is to buy small individual bags), and water (one of the few things the law firm supplied—a community bubbler). That exact meal was my lunch every day for six months. I was probably walking around with a wicked case of mercury poisoning. We’d discuss our fellow paralegals, the Goth kid who ran the file closet/photocopy room, the bizarre assortment of lawyers and their eccentricities, and what we’d done the night or weekend before. Dmitry would tell me stories of suburban family life—eating dinner with his Russian-born parents and younger brother, watching TV, borrowing the car. My conversational contributions would be updates about my nights and weekends: visiting the gay gym in my neighborhood (the Body Shop) where I would be wholly ignored by buff men, eating dinner alone in my apartment, or drinking at Wrigleyville bars with my two friends Ginny and Kate.

As if earning a barely livable wage wasn’t prize enough, I was assigned to work for one of the lawyers who was a Jekyll-and-Hyde-type woman with a JD from a subpar law school. I can tolerate working for an asshole as long as I know what to expect. That’s fine by me. But if I hear the click of your shoes and I don’t know whether you’re coming to ask me “what the fuck” I was thinking when I failed to make a third photocopy of a client’s passport even though we still have the original inside the file folder
41
or to inquire about my family reunion in Idaho (despite the fact that I’m not from Idaho and I clearly told you that I was going away for a weekend with my family in Boston), then I’m going to hate you. Just be consistent with my fragile sensibilities, would ya? Much like a child who is learning how to trust and other such shiz from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I just need consistency, dammit.

Thanks to my attorney assignment, I spent many hours at work in the bathroom crying and many hours after work at Pippin’s (a bar with peanut shells covering the floor and eight-dollar pitchers). I was too broke to afford much hair upkeep, save for a basic trim at Supercuts every so often. Those were the days where I’d wait for a haircut in a long line of men (who needed a foolproof buzz cut), then receive my haircut within eyeshot of said men. They’d watch the hairdresser spray my hair wet (no shampoo), then cut it straight across. The glamorous life!

The haircut situation was degrading, and there was no way I could afford any sort of salon hair color. I could hardly afford to ride the bus, much less drop a hundred dollars or more on a nice set of partial foils. My sister (who was my roommate at the time, though our living arrangement was more like “ships in the night”) told me about an Aveda training salon that was only a few blocks over from our apartment. You could make a reservation, show up at the Aveda training salon obscenely early on a Saturday morning, and get your hair done for free by a hairdresser in cosmetology school. You only had to pay the tip—fantastic! I promptly made a reservation, and on the appointed Saturday morning I used free transportation (my legs!) to get to the Aveda training salon, which was housed in a near-abandoned mall. Finally I’d have a day of relaxation and self-improvement, and it would be free of charge, too! I was elated.

“Selena Ko-pock?” a young wannabe colorist shouted in the crowded waiting room.

“That’s me!” I popped up and followed her to her client chair, where she sat me down and we talked. I explained what I wanted: blonde, blonde, blonde. Take me there however we have to get there—just take me there. Take the scenic route, take the long way home,
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whatever you gotta do—I just need some fresh blonde on my dome. Summer had arrived, and I had decided that some nice highlights were just what I needed to pull out of this Chicagoland depression. It’s that simple, right? A job that hardly pays a living wage and feelings of inescapable loneliness and alienation might persist, but blonde highlights will turn this boat around! I was quite chatty with the young colorist, and I thought we were connecting over a shared vision: a blonder, happier Selena.

The colorist washed my hair (which in retrospect makes
zero
sense if you are going to color a person’s hair, but perhaps washing hair was standard operating procedure for the first step at the training salon—after all, you never quite know who is walking through that door for free services or how often she showers) and then began brushing it out. As she was brushing my hair, she began frowning. What was wrong? Why was she staring at my hair and frowning? Did she hate the cut and color? So did I! You’re preaching to the choir, my new beauty school friend!

“Your hair isn’t in very good shape,” the colorist informed me.

“Yeah . . . I’m kinda not surprised. I haven’t really had money to take care of it or get much done.”

“I’m going to get my instructor—hold on,” she said and disappeared. My chair was positioned with a view out the window of the basement-level training salon and into the ventilation shaft of the building. The building’s center shaft was quite big and must have been built to be a central courtyard, but it hadn’t been completed. The ground was cement and the would-be courtyard was empty and shadowy. I just stared and wondered what would happen now. Could they refuse to color me? Is that what hell feels like?

“Hi there.” The instructor introduced herself curtly and stood next to the colorist-in-training as they looked at a chunk of wet hair on the back my head.

“See what I mean? It’s stretching. She wants to go blonde, but this stretching worries me,” the young colorist explained to her teacher. I felt like a show dog with a defect. The judges were talking about it right in front of me, as though I couldn’t hear or respond (unlike show dogs, I know).

“Is something wrong?” I inquired, reminding them that I had both ears and a mouth (and that I don’t sniff butts, dog style).

“Yes, your hair is quite damaged,” the instructor explained. “You see how it’s pulling a bit? Stretching here, you see? When hair is damaged, it stretches when it’s wet, see?” She showed me pieces on the side of my head that did seem to be stretching a bit. “It would be unwise to dye hair if it’s damaged like this,” she continued, but I had stopped listening. I wanted to scream, “Just dye my friggin’ hair, would you? I got up
so
early for this, and one of the only pleasures that I have
in life
is sleeping late because it’s free. My hair can handle it—trust me. My hair is tougher than it looks. When I was a kid, I got perm after perm after perm because of Jennifer Grey’s awesome hair in
Dirty Dancing
, and my hair never fell out, even after all those stinky chemicals. My hair can handle it, trust me. Just sweet Lord, please make me blonder. I need this.”

“OK . . . well, if you won’t dye my hair, I’ll just walk down the street and buy an at-home dye kit,” I said. I’m nothing if not reactionary and honest.

“I wouldn’t do that,” the teacher advised me.

“Well, I’m going to.” I unbuttoned the Aveda training center smock and reached for my purse. “Ummm . . . thanks?” I wasn’t about to give a tip to a girl who had washed my hair and then refused to do anything more, so I simply walked upstairs and out to the street with a wet, half-brushed head of hair.

What the fuck?
I thought as I walked. Almost immediately, hot tears began flowing down my face.
I just want blonde hair! I don’t care if it’s damaged! Just give me what I want! I got up so damn early for this!
I was muttering to myself as I walked by a Caribou Coffee shop. Since I hadn’t given the colorist a tip, I had some cash on me, and a flavored coffee was just what I needed. Unkempt, wet hair be damned! The coffee soothed my soul, and then I walked back to my neighborhood. I walked past the tanning salon where I had befriended the owners—a chatty gay couple who took a shine to me when they discovered that my birthday is only a day off from the birthday of their beloved Barbra Streisand (and yes, they gave away free tans to everyone on April 24 to celebrate Babs’s birthday). I trudged over to the Walgreens on the corner of North Broadway and West Belmont, where I purchased an at-home highlighting kit. Then I walked back to my apartment, past Pleasure Island (a sex toy store), Reckless Records (a hepcat record store), the theater where
Puppetry of the Penis
was playing, and a sushi restaurant that I could never afford to visit. I took my building’s stinky, antiquated elevator up to the fourth floor and walked into my perpetually empty apartment.