Ginger Snaps

My life is a long series of brutal disasters and unbearable heartaches.

I’ve never owned a Kate Spade purse. One year, all my Christmas cards were returned for insufficient postage. A ski instructor once said to me, “I think some people just aren’t meant to ski.” In 1972, I campaigned for George McGovern, and he didn’t even win his home state. My high school boyfriend dumped me for a girl who went with him to a Billy Graham Crusade, and got born again. I still blame Jesus for the whole thing.

But far worse than any of these misfortunes, even worse than all of them combined, is the central tragedy of my life. I was born with naturally curly red hair.

In the beginning, there were no indications that my disability would have devastating, long-term effects. As a child, puffy red hair was an admired asset. Of course, this was the 1950’s, in which high fashion and good taste included house dresses, Jello molds, Formica dinette sets, and brainy phrases like, “Daddy-O.”

When my mother took me out in the stroller, total strangers stopped her and gushed about my pretty hair. If they walked by silently, I told them to come right back here and take a look. Then I gave them a list of appropriate phrases to describe my unimaginable loveliness.

Women back then actually tried to duplicate my infrared mop of hair. They used cheap, brassy dyes that resulted in a kind of irrational terra cotta I Love Lucy sunburned lobster shade of red. And they poisoned their scalps with roadkill home permanents that left them with hair best described as fried fluff.

I thought I was the prototype of chic, enviable beauty. It was a warp of confidence that ended abruptly in Junior High School.

That’s when my girlfriends started taking bottles of baby oil laced with iodine to the beach, and went home 8 hours later with shimmering, golden tans. I went with them and went home with livid splotches of pinkish red skin, inflamed with blisters, welts, and patches of crust. I looked like I’d barely survived the bombing of the Bay of Pigs.

They cooled off from the brutal sunshine with regular splashing in the lake and emerged with the universally-approved glamor of straight hair. I came out of the same waters with incoherent peaks of wayward hair sprouting in ten directions that dried into a tantrum of bristly, uncivilized tangles.

It is not an exaggeration to say that I was the exact opposite of what girls were supposed to look like in the early1960’s. Although I didn’t know it at the time, 12 is the age when many girls shrink into a nervous, cheerless version of their formerly spirited selves. At best, they hide it beneath false bravado and compulsive conformity. At worst, beneath the imperious, malicious behavior of a bitch.

My solution was to retreat into resentful isolation at home. My best friends were books, and they had no opinions about my hair. Atticus Finch didn’t care at all what was on top of my head. Carl Sandburg admired Big Shoulders but was neutral on Little Curls. The Red Badge of Courage had nothing to do with brave redheads.

I also read about red. Apparently, it was considered an abomination throughout most of recorded history.

• In 16th century England, red-headed children were considered the result of unclean sex.
• Aristotle described redheads as “emotionally unhousebroken.”
• During the Middle Ages, it was believed that the fat from men with red hair was an excellent ingredient for poison.
• Ancient Corsicans advised citizens to spit on anyone with red hair if you passed one on the street. This would expel the foul taste in your mouth emitted by all redheads.
• One of the principles of Greek mythology was that when redheads die, they become vampires.
• And Russian tradition taught that red hair is a sure sign of insanity.

Natural redheads make up only 2% of the world’s population (13% in Scotland, 10% in Ireland). Nonetheless, a significant percentage of them have become famous, often for unpleasant reasons.

• Alexander Hamilton was a redhead, which is why Aaron Burr killed him.
• Vincent Van Gogh didn’t intend to cut off his ear. He was just trying to trim his red hair and missed.
• In Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D.H. Lawrence wrote about sexual relationships in lengthy and explicit detail. Most critics attribute such moral decadence to his pornographic red hair.
• The international philosopher, L. Ron Hubbard, also a redhead, discovered that the earth and 75 other planets were once part of a vast Confederacy led by Xenu. 75 million years ago, Xenu killed all the humans with hydrogen bombs. Their restless spirits searched for union with their true selves, which were waiting for them at the Church of Scientology on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.
• And it’s obvious why Little Orphan Annie was an orphan. Nobody wanted a frizzy, orange-haired daughter who burst into cheerful songs every 20 minutes.

At the end of Junior High my mother said I couldn’t stay in bed until I was 30. As High School began, I knew I needed a more productive strategy for my hair. So I went to war against it.

Every night for four years, I slept with strands of my hair twirled around small wire rollers that had sharp plastic bristles inside. I could have achieved the same degree of pain sticking needles into my eyeballs, but that wouldn’t have straightened my hair. In the morning I pulled out the rollers, brushed my hair with determined violence and used enough hair spray to make it look like a football helmet. I used so much, in fact, I’m responsible for 20% of the world’s ozone depletion.

Some of my friends used a process called “frosting,” which lightened sections of their hair but not all of it. Successfully executed, it created bursts of beautiful blond highlights. Unsuccessfully executed, it resulted in something Jackson Pollock would have created with a can of white paint just after he took three tabs of LSD.

Hoping for the same effect, I poured a bottle of peroxide on random splotches of my hair. Apparently, when it comes into contact with chemicals, my hair has grand mal seizures. It turned green and was utterly hideous. But quite festive during the Christmas season.

While I was in high school, the definitive authority on teenage beauty was a monthly magazine called Seventeen. It was a highly esteemed literary publication, with probing, cerebral articles like, “Makeup Tricks for Girls on the Go” and “What Do His Kisses Really Mean?” and “The Complete Guide to Tweezing.”

I read 48 issues from 9th through 12th grade, and never saw a single redheaded model.
Of all the hair styles described as silky, bouncy, perky, flattering, sleek, shiny, carefree, sophisticated, breezy, or feminine, none had curls. The premiere hair stylist at the time was Vidal Sassoon, whose stunning creations were designed exclusively for straight hair. He refused to work with curly hair because he considered it strong-willed and petulant.

In 11th grade, I discovered that human hair can be ironed. Just like ironing clothes, it gets all the wrinkles out. There wasn’t a “Hair” setting, but “Polyester” seemed close enough. One day I took a large clump of my hair, put a towel behind it, and pressed the iron. Every strand burned off, giving new meaning to the phrase, “fiery red hair.”

I went to college in 1966, the beginning of an era when the only acceptable hair style was very long and very straight. By then I had developed sophisticated strategies to hide what my own really looked like.

I bought orange juice cans, emptied and washed them. I shampooed my hair, slopped on straightening gel, and used the orange juice cans as giant rollers. Blow dryers hadn’t been invented yet, so I put a plastic cap on my head that was attached to a hose that was attached to a machine. It blew heat through the tube until the cap looked like a hot air balloon. The drying process took a long time, so I couldn’t move more than three feet for two hours, but the outcome was lovely straight hair that lasted 20 minutes.

That’s because humidity is the enemy of curly hair pretending to be straight, and Ann Arbor, Michigan is the center of three rain belts. On wet drizzling days — about 50 of them each semester — I stayed indoors and skipped all my classes. Discussing John Dryden’s heroic drama Aurangzeb was infinitely less important than my appearance. I may be the only person in history whose education would have improved considerably if I’d had straight hair.

On really bad hair days I could hide my curls. I bought a long strand of synthetic hair that looked like a horse’s tail and braided it. Then I pulled my own hair into a tight bun and attached the round clump of fake hair to the top of it. It looked like a large burgundy Cinnabon had fallen on my head, but I thought I was gorgeous.

The best example of hating my hair is my college boyfriend. I was so impressed that his hair was straight when he got out of the shower, I married him.

After college, I moved to New Mexico with my husband and son. There is no humidity there. Also no grass, tree leaves, streams, flowers, ponds, or any living vegetation that isn’t a cactus. If dirt and sand were concrete, the entire state would be paved. But at least the dry climate kept my hair curless, and it would stay that way if I lived in Albuquerque for the rest of my life.

That era was the beginning of an altered consciousness lifestyle. My altered conscience didn’t occur at a rally. It happened at a hair salon. I let the stylist cut my hair short and leave it curly. This was the most radical act of my entire life. The fact that my new style was part Afro on the whitest woman ever born, part Chia Pet, and part broccoli didn’t bother me at all.

I have kept my hair in its natural state ever since. It often looks disorganized, unhappy, and bewildered, but I’m lazy and old so I don’t care. And over the years I’ve learned some hard truths about my hair that I share generously with anyone who wants to talk about it.

• Don’t call me that. The top of a carrot is green
• Yes, it’s naturally curly. Do you think I’d do this to my hair on purpose?
• Instead of asking me if I have a temper, try pissing me off and see what happens.
• I don’t like people saying every freckle is a kiss from the sun. I don’t even want that many kisses from Bradley Cooper.
• Show me a redhead with a beautiful tan and I’ll show you a bottle of St. Tropez Full-Body Bronzing Mousse.
• Scientists say that red hair is the result of a mutation of the MC1R gene on Chromosome 16. I prefer to think of it as an upgrade in heredity.
• Sex with a redhead? Imagine embracing an Irish Setter, hyena, octopus, and porcupine at the same time.
• Blonds? Ice.
  Brunettes? Nice.
  Redheads? Vice.
• Sometimes I wonder about the girls who made fun of my hair when I was young. I picture them as fat schlubs with scraggly grey hair, sitting next to their toothless husbands on lawn chairs in front of their trailers.
• Research indicates that redheads emit 20% more pheromones than women with other hair colors. To date, however, no man has ever said to me, “Has anyone ever told you that you smell like sex?”
• It’s easy to spot a redhead in a crowd. She’s the one who’s yelling.

Because life is ironic and God is mean, I have twin daughters and one granddaughter with red hair. Anna and Laura’s hair isn’t curly, but four-year-old Lily has a swarm of fluffy red spirals on top of her head. When people see her, they comment on her unique and beautiful hair. She thanks them, says their assessment is correct, and would they like her autograph.

It’s a matter of recessive genes that tend to skip a generation. Lily’s hair came directly from me, just as mine came directly from my own grandmother. I had hoped to inherit the Royal Doulton china instead, but you can’t argue with dead people. Red hair rarely emerges from a parent, but that’s what happened with Anna and Laura. They have always loved their hair and aren’t annoyed at all that I gave it to them. They hate me for entirely different reasons.

Last year, the four of us went to Redhead Days, a yearly celebration of recessive genes in Highwood, Illinois. It’s a spectacle of 1300 people from all over the world, all of them in a bad mood. That’s because the Organizing Committee scheduled the Festival for July on an open field. No other location, except perhaps the Sahara Desert, is more inhospitable to redheads. I get 3rd degree burns walking from my back door to the garage, a distance of four feet. We are also extremely sensitive to fluctuations in temperature. I am cranky and prone to homicide when it is below 68 or above 72. A thousand people driven to heat-induced rage is not a pretty sight.

In the end, of course, life has a way of gently bumping into inevitable resolutions. Now that I’m 72, I’ve made permanent peace with my hair. Age kindly engenders a healthy relinquishment of old hostilities, unproductive habits, and foolish delusions.

At long last, I can honestly say that I love everything about being a redhead. Except the pale skin, invisible eyelashes, freckles, sunburn, white eyebrows, mottled complexion, wayward texture, and color.