My Week in Hair

Big on hair? Got questions about it? This is the blog for you. Each week, Big Hair answers your hair questions and shares an incident involving his hair, your hair, or the hair of the person next to you.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

8Es

New bar in town that I've never been to--8Es. It's supposed to be some 80s retro bar; yes, that scene from Back to the Future has come true--we have retro 80s hangouts now. Or at least, we have places named as if they are retro 80s hangouts. I walked by there one day last week, and there didn't appear to be much going on that had to do with that decade. The music didn't even sound like stuff from the 80s. Maybe it was 80s Anthrax or something--I'll admit that my knowledge of that genre of music is lacking from that period, from all periods.

The people there, of course, did not appear to be folks who lived in the 80s, except maybe as toddlers and grade schoolers. My own 80s is tied up mainly in high school. Nothing really could take me back to it. I don't feel like I'm living in the 80s when I hang out with high school kids, and I don't feel like I'm living in the 80s when I am hanging out with people I went to school with in the 80s. We look so different, and our lives are so different, so much more confusing, so much more busy, so much more adult.

Perhaps where I feel the 80s most is in the music--and most recently in the music videos. The other day, I had the opportunity to see A-ha's "Take On Me" video. I don't know that I ever saw the video in its own day, but the song itself takes me back with ease. Add in folks with crazy 1980s hairdos (the band's long feathered hair, the girl's curls) and a video with a certain haze over the live action material to make it seem more glamorous, and oh yeah, you've got me.

But what do you have me in? Perhaps the reason I can only look back at the 80s with nostalgia, look back at it when listening to its music or watching films of the period I'd never seen, is that I can only look back at it with people in the 80s, people stuck in the 80s, forever, as they are on film. Life was a lot of trouble then. I was in high school, after all, and everything is trouble for a teenager. But it was also, when I look back at it now, much more innocent. A video like this could wow me, could make me dream. It still makes me dream, but in a different ways. I used to dream of the future. Now I dream of the past.

Monday, November 20, 2006

Men versus Women

This past weekend I finally got around to watching Match Point. I'd missed it in the theater, mainly because I was too cheap to pay the full price, something I find myself increasingly unwilling to do now that I can rent and play DVDs. The film was depressing, thought provoking, and at moments intense. But this isn't a place for that sort of review; plenty of others have written up the film's implications.

I'm more interested in the film's hair. I found it difficult to discern the difference between the two main male characters in the film, Chris and Tom (?). They both had short brown hair. The women, by contrast, one a blonde, one a brunette, were not hard to tell apart at all. I don't think it was merely the difference in hair color, however.

I am reminded of my teaching days at Ole Miss. There, I had the same problem. I could very easily tell my female students apart, but the guys, mostly short haired, mostly brunette, were difficult to keep straight at times.

Perhaps, it's that I'm a guy, but I have a hard time telling guys apart, at least, until I know them very well. This wasn't as much of a problem before I moved to the South. In California, things were easier, since people were different on other levels beyond their hair. And here in Georgia, I have not had too much of a problem either, for that same reason. But in Mississippi, and among the British upperclass, the hair is all the same, it seems, for men at least, and so they blend into one indistinguishable mass. I wonder if women have a hard time distinguishing women apart. For me, even beyond the hair, there are so many other parts to keep track of, that every woman is her own person. Lucky women.

Monday, November 13, 2006

Bowlin Away

A friend of mine describes bowling as twee. It is hard, he says, not to see bowling in an ironic way, even as you participate in it. This I don't quite understand, though I suppose there is a certain kitsch value to it, helped along by movies like Kingpins and The Big Lebowski and by shows like Bowling for Dollars.

Bowlers do have a certain aura about them, I suppose, a certain look we expect--or that I expect. I think bowler, and I think of some overweight bald guy in a bowling shirt. He's someone who, if he were tough enough, would have been in a motorbike gang. Instead, he's a bowler. It's easier, and he gets to drink just as much beer.

But this is, of course, not what bowling is about, and I don't know that I've ever seen such a stereotype at a bowling alley when I've been there. Where, then, does the idea arise? This I don't know.

When I look at the two bowling movies mentioned above, I cannot recall any character fitting this description. In fact, if anything, the some of the bowling characters--in the form of Bill Murray in Kingpins and arguably John Tortillo in Lebowski--seemed consumed with maintaining a neat image. A whole page analyzing Murray's hair in that film could probably be written, if only I had seen the film recently.

Monday, November 06, 2006

Brazilian Hairdo

Have you got your Brazilian hairdo? Apparently, this weekend, that meant country, though I'm not sure what even that means. What is a country hairdo? What is a Brazilian one?

I didn't bother changing my hair to be Brazilian. I didn't bother changing anything. But a lot of folks dressed up as hicks, blackened out teeth, added freckles, wore overalls. And then they danced--to Brazilian folk music, which sounded suspiciously like Mexican mariachi music.

I didn't dance. I'm not really Brazilian. I was a pretender who refused to pretend. I felt merely awkward.

But dance they did, and then the music shifted into hip hop and techno, and I stood around watching. Watching was fine. Some of those Brazilians were pretty suave dancers. One of the men was so smooth that any girl he danced with looked stunning in his arms. That's the sort of dancer I'd like to be.

But I don't have Brazilian hair, and I don't know the Brazilian dance steps. It would have been no good to pretend, not with a man like that around.