Growing up in the Beach Boys days, my idea of the perfect girl hair was a shoulder-length flip.  It might be teased on top, it might have bangs, or a bow, but it had that cute little flip up on the ends that really said, “Beach Girl”.  (A beach girl who obviously never went in the water).   I tortured my hair, and I tortured my mom in my quest, but I was determined to achieve the flip.

What I achieved was a slow-growing realization that EVERYONE HAS DIFFERENT HAIR.  Not only did hair length play an important part — my hair was too long to maintain any sort of flip on the ends — but hair texture did, too.  I could Dippity-Do it till the coyotes came home, I could sleep on curlers every night, but I never quite got the look I wanted.  I swung between Judy Garland braids and a tightly-curled poodle do.

Not only does everyone have different hair — but they have DIFFERENT HAIR AT DIFFERENT TIMES IN THEIR LIVES.  By the time my hair was ready to comply, the cute flip was out of fashion.  Maybe I just got the right cut; maybe the hair products had improved, but I think it had more to do with the stage of life I was in.  At the time, I chalked it up to contrariness.  My hair never did what I wanted it to do.  Curl?  No, it was dead straight.  But when Susan Dey was wearing her hair straight and parted in the middle, mine suddenly had an annoying wave.

I have since made peace with my hair; I don’t ask too much of it, and it doesn’t disappoint.  Fortunately, I have lovely highlights in the form of gray streaks now, and it is so much more than I ever dreamed of back in the days of the Beach Boys.