Thursday, November 20, 2008

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?)

6 comments:

Mega said...

I thought it looked fine the way it was when you posted that video, but hey I'm just a guy, what do I know :P

Carol said...

Ah ha, I laughed out loud just remembering all this! You forgot to mention the time we burned your hair with the perm! We had to cut it short and I cried as did you! The remedy...the silk daisy barrette.

"which little girl? Oh, the one with the flower barrette."

AnnaMarlene said...

Ha! How funny, I was always wanting the pretty frech braids one of the girls in my first grade class had,but my moms at home hair cuts always left me with less then fashionalble hair....I'm with you on this one: Oh to be a Disney princess....

~**Dawn**~ said...

1. Sleeping Beauty was (and remains) my favorite Disney movie/princess.

2. I have the same dark hair issues. Only my brown is not even a *nice* brown. It's blah boring mousy brown. It's also baby fine but there is a LOT of it, which means it looks flat if I grow it out. In addition to that, some of it is wavy while the rest of it is straight, and there are random cowlicks that make cutting my hair a challenge.

3. I *so* went the way of the horrible perms. Someday I will have to scan in some of *those* photos.

I get around all this by keeping it short and I add some blonde and reddish-brown highlights. I tried to convince my stylist to put in some deep warm rich brown lowlights, but she recommended against it. =/ She said the length of my hair would force me to color it more often, because it would be more obvious than the highlights as it grows out. As it is, I get it cut every 6 weeks & highlighted every other cut.

Susan Skitt said...

I like your real hair :) It's something how we always wish for something we don't have, right? But God teaches us to be satisfied in Him :) Oh course that doesn't mean that I don't get those highlights at the salon. Just an enhancement!

P.S. My blog is in transition right now. I transfered domain names to www.susanskitt.com for my Adventurous Living site, but it will take a few days to go through. And I also changed email addresses. It's now susanskitt@verizon.net

Have a great day!

Susan Skitt said...

Just stopping by to see what "the girl" has been up to for Thanksgiving :) Hope you had a lovely day, my friend!

P.S. Adventurous Living is up and running :)