February Report / Out of Hair Gel

It dawned on me a week ago, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. For the first two months of the ex-consumer project I happily lathered my way through an already half-finished tube of my favorite hair gel, not even realizing I had a problem. I knew I could buy soap and toilet paper, and probably a new toothbrush in the event that mine fell in the toilet... so I somehow assumed that there would be an endless supply of hair gel also. All I'd have to do is go to the hair gel store and get some.

But last week the tube of gel ran dry, and while forcing out its final splutters, I realized that there was no "Ex-Consumer" provision for buying more. I looked back through the Ex-Consumer rules, trying to find a clause under which its purchase would be permissible. Maybe hair gel was something I needed for work? Maybe looking presentable was part of my job? But of course, I didn't (and don't) have a job, so that didn't fly. Maybe it was a hygienic supply? It is, after all, kept in the bathroom! But when I was honest with myself, I had to admit that gel doesn't do anything for keeping the body clean and healthy. After one last scan for loopholes, I came to the conclusion that I'd boxed myself out. There was no provision made for the single and most critical element of my beauty regimen. As a result, I was consigned to a miserable ugly girl fate which I shared with a roomful of terrible children's book characters; Ms. Frizzle, Hermione Grainger, and the dread Orphan Annie.

I got hooked on hair gel when I was eleven years old. I've always had VERY fuzzy, nappy hair, and when I was younger, I had a really hard time brushing out the knots. I was convinced I was allergic to my own hair, because combing it always made me sneeze. As a result, I had a rather lacksidasical attitude when it came to policing the nappy knots that seemed to blossom in it overnight. I would make an attempt to get out the ones I could reach. But the hard-to-get ones in the back would eventually start to turn to dreads, at which point my mother would usually intervene and help me brush them out using lots of cream rinse. One time, though, the dreads had advanced too far and could not be extricated, no matter how much cream rinse was applied.

And so I was sent to the barber, who proceeded to butcher my hair, giving me a mannish look that must have been intended to go with a shoulder-padded power suit and some dangly 80s earrings.
I was crushed. I cried through the entire hair cut. My beauty standard at this time was located somewhere back in the 70s, and involved very long, straight hair like the kind Juliet has Zeffirelli's 1968 "Romeo and Juliet." Compared to that standard, I looked like an abomination of femininity.

The only consolation to me in this world of darkness was a little pot of hair gel which I was given at the barber's. I had always liked my hair when it was wet, because at these moments it almost looked like the hair of a normal girl. And I noticed that if enough of the magic gel was slapped onto it, it looked "wet" for a lot longer. I had some application problems at the outset. Initially I would only gel the top of my head, smoothing my hair down from the part in the middle and imagining that I looked like Juliet. Over the course of the day, though, the underlying, ungreased hair would slowly start to rise and poof, like popcorn in a popper, and sooner or later there would be a mass of puffy hair supporting a board-flat layer of gelled-to-death top hairs at a 45 degree angle from my head.

Eventually I got the technique down, and then my life was gravy. The gel helped a lot. I felt that it allowed me to "pass," helping me slide away from childhood nicknames like "flaming fro."
Until today. I am left with a single bottle of hair gel, and it is only a quarter full. Unless I can learn to make some more, that is all the gel I will have for the remainder of the year. So I must keep that quarter bottle in reserve for a rainy day, or a big event when I must look presentable. And for the rest of the time, I must face the reality of genetics.

I can't think of any happy moral to the story as yet. I noticed that on Oscar Night, Scarlett Johansen was wearing her hair in a decidedly frizzy 'do. I also noticed that the style met with stern disapproval from the audience members with whom I was watching the Awards. This does not bode well for me, as I'll be sporting "Scarlett Johansen, Oscar Night" for the remainder of 2005.
Hello March. This year I will truly be "In like a lion, and out like a lamb." Or in other words, I'll be fuzzy-looking the whole month through.

 

 

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