Protest Chic
How I learned self acceptance from my daughter — and her hair.
I never get tired of talking about hair. If there is ever an opportunity to gab about a hair style, texture of hair, color, length or frustrations of uncooperative hair, I’m in; even when it’s a stranger in a line at the grocery store. What makes this a little peculiar is that I have always hated my hair.
I was born with soft, curly brown hair that around the age of eight turned wiry and coarse, and proved impossible to style like all the other kids in the 1970s with long and straight, or face-framing, Farrah Fawcett-inspired, feathered hair. Not that I was styling my own hair then — my mom usually did the job with a stiff bristled brush each morning while my dad looked on and said that my hair looked like a rat’s nest.
To make matters worse, my sister Gigi, who is just 10 months older than me, had waist-length, straight hair with an oh-so-gentle wave, she routinely wore in a high ponytail fastened atop her head or flowing straight down to her backside, just like one of the Brady girls. Gigi and I idolized Marcia and Jan.
Right around the time I turned 12 years old, two significant things happened. After hosting a couple of different Japanese visitors for a homestay program, my mom had the bright idea of signing me and Gigi up for a youth exchange program. The plan was to send us to two different parts of Japan for a month in the summer of 1976. Gigi would go south, near Hiroshima, and I was sent to live with a family just a few minutes from the heart of Tokyo by train. This arrangement was made in spite of the fact that my sister and I had never met our hosts and spoke only 3 words of Japanese.
The other significant thing that happened around that same time was that Barbra Streisand become very popular in my hometown when she made the movie A Star is Born and it screened at the local walk-in theater on Main Street. Barbra became all the rage — not just for her magnificent singing voice or her characterization of the underdog, Esther, who she played in the movie, but for her voluminous head of curly hair, referred to at that time as “the natural.”
Before I was shipped off to Japan, my mom took me to a local stylist, named Leilani, (and curiously not of Hawaiian descent or from the islands at all). Leilani and her sister, Aloha, were known to the town locals as specialists in the haircut known as “the natural.” To this day, I cannot believe that my twelve-year-old self complied with my mom’s insistence that I get my hair cut in a super short ‘do, only 2 inches long all over my head, which made me look like my grandmother’s frizzy-headed poodle. The poodle resemblance was especially troubling because my childhood nickname was …wait for it … Mimi. When I came out of the salon that day, I could barely stand to look in the mirror.
A couple of months later, I found myself alone in Japan, with a family I did not know, but with a full agenda of activities that always involved taking photos. In each one, I have the unmistakable frowny face of a girl who looks perpetually jet lagged, is homesick, and detests her short, curly hair.
When I had my daughter Olivia, I couldn’t decide if I wished upon her my naturally curly hair or her dad’s thick, straight Italian hair. When she was a baby, she had the softest golden locks. I still remember how wonderful it felt to nuzzle her neck, kiss her soft cheek, and brush my face against her fine baby hair.
At about four-years-old, Olivia’s hair began to curl. Almost overnight it turned from wispy, golden flax to bouncy, light brown corkscrews. Contrary to my own mother, I was able to care for Olivia’s mane as it grew longer and became thicker.
By the time she reached middle school, she was able to handle the hair on her own, but like me, went through a period of lusting after a silky and straight flowing mane. Around that time, my daughter managed to sneak an industrial-strength flat iron into the house and began a two-year process of damaging her hair in the quest for flat, smooth hair.
I would wander into her bathroom and look in the sink to find broken off pieces of her beautiful hair, but no amount of pleading would get her to stop using the iron.
As Olivia grew older, she did eventually learn to love her hair and respect its natural state. She grew up at a time when there is an entire aisle dedicated to curly hair: co-washing balms, masque conditioners, leave-in moisturizers, curl extender sprays, spiral-inducing gels, exotic oils and countless other potions. When I was growing up, we did not even have mousse.
By the time Olivia became a rock musician at age 17, she had manifested the wild curly hair of a Janis Joplin or Beyoncé when she decides to go curly. Olivia embraced it, owned it, and has cultivated it as an essential part of her rock-star persona.
She, like me, never tires of talking about hair — hair products, haircuts, genius hair inventions, like the microwavable deep conditioning cap, and hair mishaps of all varieties. There is no hair topic too trivial or insignificant for our hair discourse. My husband cannot believe how much time we spend talking about hair.
At school last year, Olivia took her hair obsession to a whole new level. Ever the budding entrepreneur, she started a business called ODB Snips (@ODBSnips ) and for $7 she cuts other college students’ hair. She says $5 is too little and $10 is out of the range for college kids who are perpetually broke.
After returning home from school in New York earlier this year because of Covid-19, Olivia told us that her hair had become irreparably damaged and lost its ability to curl. This was allegedly caused by a product that has since been recalled and called out on social media by curly hair influencers. And so, on a random Tuesday, during week 11 of the pandemic lock down, Olivia chopped off all but 2 inches of her curly hair, in a cropped style I refer to as “protest chic.”
Olivia did, in fact, take part in the mass protests taking place all over our city, but that’s not the only reason I call her hairstyle “protest chic.” That label refers to the bold protest that comes from ignoring what society tells you is beautiful and desirable, and being so sure of yourself, that you can look in the mirror, run your hand through your face-framing, 2-inch, curly ‘do, and proudly smile.
