WOULDN’T YOU KNOW IT?


egypt-wig

I woke up a month or so ago and took a good look at my thinning hair and its effect on the wrinkles on my face. It was clearly a cry for help; namely another wig/hairpiece/style. There seems to be some sort of stigma attached to the wearing of a wig, so we will refer to it as a “style”. I have no idea why this disturbs some people. Celebrities obviously would never be caught dead in their own scraggly locks. Watching an old Lucille Ball show, Dr. Advice chirped “There! You can see she isn’t wearing a wig!” Really?! I don’t think his poor old eyes were twirling in the right direction. Not only is she wearing a wig, it isn’t even the right shade of red.

Anyway, I ordered one from a reputable place in whom I placed great trust that they would choose a complimentary shade of grey from their 50 choices. Wen it came, I thought it must be wrong, because my hair is blonde-ish, not silver. Well, Dr. A. liked it anyway, so I wore it to Seattle, and first cracker out of the barrel—my daughter did not. I hung it over a door knob during my visit and vowed to try again.

This time I bought from a catalogue with a picture of my hair color. The trick to ordering from the catalogue is to cover up the faces because they use adorable young women as models, who probably don’t need a wig anyway. You have to imagine yourself wearing it and flipping it about as you would something actually attached to your head. You don’t want it to scream “WIG” do you?

I loved it immediately and plopped it on my head to show Dr. A. I got a thumbs up, so I wore it to Southern California to visit my other daughter. She loved it too, so we went out to lunch at a favorite Mexican place in Camarillo, which is conveniently next door to a wig shoppe. ( I spell it that old fashioned way because it is just on the verge of being posh.) We had with us that day our eight year old great granddaughter Savanna, who flipped out when she saw all the plastic heads staring at us from the window dressed in varying lengths and shades of blonde, brown, black and even one with purple strands throughout, (it was Halloween). Naturally we went in, and since I was wearing the new style, I asked the lady behind the desk if she thought it could use some touches. She played around with it, gave it a spritz of hair spray and off I went, pleased as a puppy with a new bone.

That evening my friend Greg said he wouldn’t have known it was a ‘you-know-what’ and I choose to believe him. Now it sits alongside all my other hair styles, some of which really are not my color anymore; there may even be a strawberry blonde one because I always wanted to be a redhead. They probably have more fun than blondes. Vanity, thy name is woman. (I read that somewhere years ago when I was first married. It obviously made no impression.) This will now give Savanna something more to dwell on along with what she calls my fake teeth and fake shoulder. The rest of her family is perking along on all fours.

Forgive the idiocy, I simply had to tell you.

Author: kaytisweetlandrasmussen83

I am a retired fine arts teacher, sculptor/painter, writer, and a native Californian. I love my family,dogs, horses, movies, reading and music, probably in that order. I have been married forever to a very nice man who is nice to old ladies, dogs and children.

22 thoughts on “WOULDN’T YOU KNOW IT?”

  1. Well, I think if a new style suits you, you should have it. And that’s about all the wisdom I have to impart as far as that goes. Both my mom and my aunt gave them a whirl. Mom got fed up because hers wasn’t perfect, and my aunt — well, she could still be wearing hers for all I know. It doesn’t look like it, but you never know.

    Now, to the funny stuff. I just howled when I saw your little aside about “Vanity, thy name is woman.” I used a variant of that expression in the new post I put up today. You’ll not miss it. In the process, I did learn that the original is from Hamlet. After Hamlet is chastised by Claudius,for grieving his father so much, Hamlet denounces his mother’s swift remarriage with the statement, “Frailty, thy name is woman.” The implication, of course, is that all women are frail.

    It turns out a new word’s been coined to describe this sort of linguistic copycatting: snowclone. I know, it sounds silly. But it makes sense. A snowclone “conveys information by using a familiar verbal formula and the cultural knowledge of the audience.” Instead of “frailty, thy name is woman,” you used “Vanity, thy name is woman.”

    Really interesting.

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    1. I’ve always thought it fun to try a new hairstyle, and they are a convenient way to achieve it.

      I did know the one abut “frailty”. I wonder if Shakespeare was referring to women’s strength of body or mind. The vanity one came about from a joke gift someone gave us for the bar when we were married. Six small cups and a porcelain carafe on a tray. Each thing was imprinted with a death’s head which if you looked closely enough, showed a woman’s face.

      Interesting about “snowclone”. A new word for me.

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  2. Great story and so much wisdom. I remember our grandson Jak, when about 5, asking an old man almost bent double at a Woolworth store. What is wrong with you?
    The man was deaf and did not react… A child’s curiosity can be confronting.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Confronting to the elder but also confusing to the child. Many of these things are “fact of life” which they will run across through life. I think making them “no big deal” is the best. I’ve always been able to take things as they come, hopefully with humor. With the wig thing, it has always been something for a change of style rather than necessity for me. Rather like a fun new hat.

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  3. Thanks for a frank and humorous discussion of a subject that is rarely discussed. I don’t think I ever heard anything about women’s hair thinning as they aged and I was taken completely by surprise when it happened to me. So far, it’s not too bad, just one more of the numerous vexations of getting older.

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  4. Occcasionally I look into my iPad and a fearful, dissolute monster looks back. Now, that’s an image nothing could renovate. Poor chap!

    The mirror returns a face covered in shaving cream, so I have no idea how little those passing years have played with it.

    Glenys suggests dyeing my hair black. I have no idea why, I can’t see much of it from here.

    Wigs definitely make judges and barristers look younger.

    Some men are so vain they think this post is about them.

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    1. I looked into my iPad once and that was enough for a lifetime of fear.

      As my eyesight dims I find the individual parts of my face have disappeared, so I don’t worry about them, and after all these years I know where my mouth is to apply my lipstick.
      Why are the courtroom wigs always white? Maybe they would look better black.

      No, this post was about ME because I’m so vain.

      Liked by 1 person

  5. Years ago now, my sister and I were discussing on the phone the colour of my choice of wig, when my hair fell out through chemotherapy. We are Scottish. Instead of pronouncing the word ‘my’ our accent leans towards ‘ma’ instead.
    “So” I said to her, “will ma wig be brown, will ma wig be black, will ma wig be blonde, or will ma wig be grey?” We couldn’t decide there and then, but we did come up with a name for it. Wilma! So that was settled well before I chose a chestnut brown one; which I hardly wore as it cooked me. It sounds as though yours is very comfortable and at one with you.

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    1. Oh I love that name! I must come up with a suitable name for mine! Perhaps Shirley would be a good one. I would never wear one in hot weather either. Also you can’t wear one while cooking as heat ruins the hair. So if you are fixing dinner, wait until the food is on the plate before you “dress up” or have someone else working in the kitchen.

      Liked by 1 person

  6. And why not ?! Most women’s hair seems to thin out with the years; and this is one of the reasons I keep mine really short. But I’m lucky, it’s also really thick – not that I mean to be irritating, Katy …. 🙂

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    1. I wrote in a previous blog “ALL WIGGED OUT” abut the dog stealing a wig and running down the road with it! The children were delighted and I thought it was hilarious. Another time a very large man gave me a bear hug and knocked my hat with wig cockeyed . A friend grabbed it and saved me.

      Liked by 2 people

  7. Thanks for sharing this delightful story, Kayti. I’ve always had long hair, and I got hold of a wig to see what short hair was like. I only wore it once or twice, but in later years my kids had a lot of fun with it. 😀

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  8. They ARE fun. After seeing the movie CHICAGO I love Katherine Zeta Jone’s hair so I bought a short black one for a Halloween party. It came in handy later for an Asian dinner party. I had been in a number of plays in my younger life, and always loved dressing as someone else, which often involved a wig with your costume.

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  9. And then there was the day I arrived home with my new insulin pump hooked to the waist of my 501s.
    A moment’s consideration and with a treacherous twinkle in her eyes, my tween states, “a video game!” and it occurs to me that now she has a battery – operated mother.
    (Batteries not included.)
    ~a.

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