Rebel With a Pause
In the back of my lingerie drawer, I have a long, blond fall made from my grandmother’s hair when she was young. It’s exactly the same color as mine, or what I remember being mine so long ago. The other day I took it out and gave it a long-overdue comb-out, thinking long and hard over what this long, Rapunzelish artifact meant to me. I held the hair up next to my face and wondered what it would be like to start all over again, and I couldn’t even imagine it--which, of course, meant I had to try. * Not to mention the fact that my new swimming pool had turned my chemically imbalanced mop various shades of arid orange-green from root to stem. * I came of age in an era when “natural” hair meant
you were either some kind of sprout-eating, sandalwood-reeking macrame artist or, on the flip side, a tennis-playing, cheerleading, Nancy Drew-reading pageant contestant. I always felt a special repugnance for girls who worried obsessively over their long, pretty, pretty hair: To me they were like show horses grooming themselves, creatures at once animal and unnatural--and yet ominously domestic. On the other hand, if you read Kafka and listened to the Clash, you didn’t want silky honey-blond hair, which, as a sub-cosmic joke, is what God gave me.
So I rebelled with a black Louise Brooks bob one season and a pink shag the next. I wasn’t pretty, I wasn’t nice, I wasn’t good. And my hair, many thanks, said so.
But 20 years later, I had tired of relentless stylistic innovation in all things, from hair to literature. I began to notice other women my age who clung to youthful looks dragged forward from whatever subculture they’d last passed through, and wow, is there nothing scarier than a 40-year-old Betty Paige look-alike. Conclusion: By a certain age, rebellion has to be about substance, not style.
So I made an appointment with Michael Canale, widely regarded as the best hair color fix-it man in town. With salons in Washington, D.C., and Beverly Hills, he fixes “Friends” stars when they come back to the set from bad-hair movie roles (Courteney Cox’s streaks from “Scream”) and presidents (though he won’t say which ones) when the rigors of office turn them gray. He even fixed Marla Maples, which I would have said could not be done.
I handed him my grandmother’s fall and said, “This is my natural hair color and I want it back.” For Canale, I had just thrown down a gauntlet, and his eyes shone with the challenge. Like most people who are incredibly good at what they do, he gave no outward appearance of putting much thought into it at all. He slapped some goo on a few strands near the bottom, then wrapped them in tinfoil. When that was done, he mixed up some color and applied it overall. That was all. No fancy techniques, just an alchemical touch. Like a dentist, he lectured me a bit on what not to do to my poor head of hair ever, ever again.
No. 1: Dying your own hair is a bit like trying to paint your own car--a vivid and accurate metaphor, I learned. Even if, by some fluke, it looks good when you’re done, it won’t after a couple of weeks, and all you’re really accomplishing is making it impossible for any but the most seasoned (and costly) professional to set it right again.
No. 2: Wash your hair in cold water. (Yeah, right! I took this to mean not-so-scalding.)
No. 3: Use balsam conditioner.
No. 4: The best defense against chlorine is to wet your hair before getting in the pool. Like a sponge that’s already saturated, it won’t soak up the bad water if it’s already full of good water. To be really safe, Canale says, “soak your hair, slather it with a balsam product, then stick it in a swim cap.”
No. 5: A daily dose of spirulina will stimulate hair growth.
No. 6: Always cut before you color: Highlights should follow the lines of a haircut.
When Canale finished waving his magic wand over my head, presto, I had hair the exact color and texture as I’d had in the ninth grade. No one would believe I hadn’t just sprung wholly formed from Zeus’ knee. This was no mere salon but a veritable time machine. And the whole process took less than an hour.
Canale was obviously pleased with his virtuoso feat, though replicating nature is for him more of a parlor trick than an art form. He said approvingly, “It’s natural. It’s the exact color of what you brought in.” Then the stylist in him added, “Of course, it’s kind of boring . . . . “
But that’s just it! Oh timid new world! “That’s the most radical thing about it,” I gushed. “It’s boring hair! Nobody has boring hair these days. Boring is the absolute cutting edge!”
Since then, the sun and several washings have taken me from nerd chic to basic beach girl. The strangest thing to get used to is how people who meet me now assume that I’m nice. And for the most part, I let them.
*
Styled by Victor Vargas; hair: Mitzi Spallas/Cloutier; makeup: Nancy I. Zuniga; model: Dana Tripp/Nous Model Management; silk top by Carolina Herrera; earrings by Erica Courtney.
