The Plight of a Brown Haired Girl (In a world were blond is beautiful and brown is boring.)

Every since I was a little girl I always wanted to have long blond curly hair. Just like Pricess Aroura in Sleeping Beauty.

But I don't have long blond curly hair. My hair is very much a dark chestnuty brown and considerably straight. It has been this way since I was two and it was a few years later, at about four that I became enthralled with Sleeping Beauty. Who knew that a child of four could develop a covetousness for the hair of someone who wasn't even real, but I did.

I longed to have her hair on my head. Instead I had a short bowl haircut that was poker straight. Probably something along the lines of Dorothy Hammill. My mother thought this was adorable, as I looked like the chubby Campbell Soup Kid, but I didn't much like it. Especially since my best friend in preschool had the long blond ringlets I so desperately desired.

I would often ask my mother:
"Mommy?" I would say...
"When can I have curly yellow hair like Sleeping Beauty?"
To which my mother would answer,
"Oh I'm sorry honey, but you will always have brown hair."

Upon hearing this disappointment I would often pretend in my room that I had long hair by taking my tights off, putting them on my head and whipping my head around, pretending that it was my real long hair. Okay now I know that sounds really pathetic, but what can I tell you? I was just a kid with a strange imagination.

Eventually I came to terms with the fact that my hair would never be "yellow" or naturally curly. Enter the late 80's and series of poodle like perms. Then puberty came around and my addiction to Princesses and Barbie Heads went in the direction of Teen Magazine. I loved Teen Magazine. I got it in the mail for years and to my recollection it was fairly innocent back then. (It was Seventeen that was the semi-racy one.)

Then one day I found an ad in the back of the magazine. It was a tiny ad. I remember the words exactly "Want Longer, Stronger, Thicker Hair?" Then the ad went on to talk about this new shampoo product that couldn't be sold in stores but was available for a limited time only. It showed a picture of a beautiful brunette with straight brown hair like mine but it was long and thick and she was wearing a bikini and I thought she looked beautiful. I wanted to be her. Mind you, I couldn't have been more than 13 when I saw this ad and no amount of shampoo was going to turn me into a sexy, twenty something knock out over night. I was barely wearing a training bra.

So I decided to save up my babysitting money and buy that shampoo. I think that it totaled about 12 dollars. I cut the ad out, put it in an envelope and sent my hard earned cash to Tennessee, or someplace like that and waited and waited.

I probably waited about two weeks for it to show up. But it did finally arrive. That evening I couldn't wait to wash my hair. I remember it was a tiny bottle and the ad with the sexy lady was on it again, which reinforced the thought that I was going to look like her soon. That night as I washed my hair I remembered that I thought it smelled really bad, it was brown for heaven sakes and it did not come with a conditioner. Once my hair had dried I checked it out in the mirror. Hmmm, it still looked the same. Nothing different just a little bit smellier and not in a good way.

I must have washed my hair every day until I used up half that bottle before I realized I had been had. My hair was not growing any faster, it wasn't looking any thicker and I certainly didn't look like the beautiful brunette in the ad. So I decided to toss the bottle and go back to using PertPlus which I don't even think they sell anymore. My hopes were fairly dashed. Longer, Stronger, Thicker, Hair was just not meant to be I guess.

But sometimes...when no one is looking, I'll put this on my head and it always makes me feel a little bit better.



(Author's Note: I don't actually own a yellow wig. My friend let me borrow that. I wonder if maybe she needs to feel blond some days too?)