Learning to live with or without your hair is a huge part of life. When we are born, we have very little hair, and soon it begins to grow into place. One of the first things we need to learn, in addition to how to walk, talk, eat, and speak is how to deal with our hair. Everyone’s hair is different, so it’s important for each of us to know the specifics of how our hair fits into our lifestyle.
We must become familiar with our hair type and learn how to care for it—when to shampoo it and when to “let it go” another day, how much conditioner to use and how long to leave it on, which brush to use and exactly when to start styling it.
My sisters inherited my mom’s thick hair and they both have long, wavy manes. Always my father’s daughter, I had to settle for pin-straight limp locks. The sibling rivalry started at an early age when we each wanted what the other had and it continues to thrive.
As we grow older, our hair grows too. Throughout our childhood, we choose the most decadent barrettes, ribbons, and bows and beg our moms to fasten them at the ends of pigtails and braids. Then we watch them spend hours on end trying to get the knots out after a long day at play. I will never forget that faithful bottle of No More Tangles sitting at the edge of the bathtub, ready and waiting to diligently go to work. For special occasions, my mom would set my stick-straight brunette locks in rollers and leave them in place overnight, only to unroll them the next morning and see the curls droop minutes later. Years of tap dancing lessons provided plenty of opportunities for carefully coifed ’dos that would take hours to undo at the end of each performance. We’d always find tiny flecks of silver glitter from our costumes strewn throughout our follicles.
Through it all, I was grateful that my generation did not have to endure what our mothers’ and grandmothers’ did. My mom, who grew up in the pre-blow-dryer era of the 1950s, remembers sitting under a hair cap with a hose attached to dry her hair. She wrapped her hair with toilet paper to straighten it and slept on hard curlers since softer versions were not yet available. In the 1960s her friends used falls, a sort of wig that let them wear their hair Hollywood style. My dad didn’t approve of Mom sporting someone else’s hair, so she grew her hair long, then cut it off and created her own fall.
My great-aunt tells stories of doing both her mom’s hair and her daughter’s. Her mom, my great-grandmother, had long silver locks, and my aunt used to set them in pin curls every night. Years later, before the flat iron was born, she slaved over an iron and ironing board trying to straighten her daughter’s wildly curly mane.
So my life in relation to my hair seemed comparatively easier—I just had to get through it.
As the oldest of three daughters, whom my mom loved to dress alike, I was known as one of the Bressler sisters. Time and again our parents’ friends and distant relatives failed to grasp the concept that we each had our very own individual first names. Things got worse when our mom started taking us to the same hair shop to get our haircuts. A famous photo that used to sit on our baby grand piano features all three of us and my mom with similar ’dos.
Class pictures were no fun either. I will never forget the night before my fourth-grade photo session when my mom took us to the local barber shop. My boyish pixie cut couldn’t have happened at a worse time, and I’ll always have the snapshot to remember it by.
Dorothy Hamill made the bob famous during my year in fifth grade, and of course I had to try it before deciding to let my hair grow to at least shoulder length. By the sixth grade, Barbra Streisand brought back the perm. The most popular girls in class, who probably had their own personal hairdressers, were the first to test-drive the new chemical concoctions and looked ultra-glam. But just my luck, I came out looking as if I’d stuck my finger in an electric socket. And there was no hiding it! By the end of first period, news of my afro was already circulating, and kids were stopping by my locker between periods to see the damage for themselves. In seventh grade, there wasn’t one male classmate who didn’t have the poster of Farrah Fawcett in her red bathing suit hanging above his bed, spotlighting—among other things—her golden blonde feathered-back mane.
Thank goodness for high school! (We would finally be allowed to express our individuality and wear our hair the way we wanted.) During my first semester, however, nothing prepared me for being chosen as a volunteer in the annual assembly for energy conservation. Little did I know that public humiliation was only seconds away as I was pulled from the audience, walked onto the stage in front of half the school, and gently placed my hand on the static electricity machine, only to have all the hairs on my head stand on end! The laughter was deafening.
During the next few years, my hair would undergo a series of extreme measures. Four years on the swim team (hundreds of laps a week in a chlorinated pool) were starting to take its toll. My hair turned tints of yellow, then green. My sisters and I tried every shampoo and conditioner under the sun. I remember being amazed at the fact that Body on Tap contained a healthy dose of beer. We turned to Wella Balsam and Pert to cleanse away our dirt and grime. We related to the Breck Girls as they bounced their beautiful locks across the TV screen. And we told two friends about the miracle of Faberge, and they told two friends, and so on and so on and so on. In the summers, we soaked in Sun-In and, when our mom put her foot down, we used real lemons instead. We “fed” our hair fattening egg yolks, vinegar, and mayonnaise because they were supposed to give us the beautiful, shiny, healthy hair that we dreamed of.
College was another era, and we couldn’t wait to embrace it. Neither could our hair. Still eager to stand out in the collegiate crowd, I dragged my mom to the hair salon on a school break and made her watch as I let the colorist add what I thought would be subtle streaks. About twenty minutes into the process, my mom nervously screamed, “That’s enough!” and I was whisked out of the salon. I didn’t know the damage that had been done until a year later when the pledges in my sorority had to learn the names of all the founding sisters, of which I was one. One girl thanked me for making myself easy to remember. “You’re the girl with the streak down the back of her head!” she said.
My first job after college was in the bookings department of Vogue magazine. I envied the models who had their hair done beautifully as a career perk and admired the stylists I booked for shoots who were able to make them look good. I was introduced to the top stylists in New York and began to learn about the skills and techniques that are available in this big city.
I became good friends with Michele Brothier of Filles et Garçons where I would go for cuts, color, and the very regular blow-dry. I entrusted my locks to Carmine and Beth Minardi who cut and colored my hair every six weeks to ensure that it remained on par with New York’s tough fashion standards. And I attempted to “do” my ’do myself, in preparation for professional gigs like press parties and TV appearances as well as personal plans like weddings and dates.
I became the benefactor of an unending supply of beauty products as each day at work brought about a delivery of some sort. My friends began calling me all the time, eager to try out the latest and greatest concoction. I’ve had my hair snipped and analyzed and I’ve even had a microscopic picture of my cuticle blown up and presented to me in a silver Pottery Barn frame along with a complete breakdown of its health.
Always of the low-maintenance variety, I could get ready to go out in about 20 minutes, so I never understood friends who needed an hour to blow-dry their hair. I couldn’t comprehend women who planned their days around their hair, missing sessions at the gym to make a blow-dry last or not hitting the beach to preserve their curls. As long as I have my Jennifer Aniston—inspired layers, I can get through the day.
As I grow older, it is even more difficult for me to understand the plight of my friends who have been slowly losing their hair naturally or those few who are undergoing chemotherapy and have had to watch their hair fall out. For someone who always thought of my roots showing as a major catastrophe, I realized I had a lot to learn about hair.
It is for this reason that I find a need for The Hair Bible, a comprehensive book on hair, how it grows, how we need to take care of it, and how we can deal with losing it. I believe all women will be able to relate.
Our hair is our best accessory, but it can also be our worst nightmare. I hope to quell that possibility by touching on the basics of hair care and offering advice from the most reputable professionals in the field and from individual women who share their inspiring experiences with us all. Enjoy!