three stooges

The Farrah Fawcett.  Circa “Charlie’s Angels.”  This was my first celebrity haircut.  I remember it quite clearly – shuffling into the salon with its white-painted trellis dividers between stations, the brown and green mushroom-print wallpaper behind domes of the hair dryers, and the pendant lights hanging from gold chains over each swiveling seat.  There is only one person whom a female of any age walking into this very setting could possibly ask to resemble by the time she walks out of it.  No matter the time period.  Farrah with her perfectly sun-streaked blond wings and fat ringlets cascading past the shoulders.  I asked for just that as I scooted back onto the booster in the chair and stretched my neck to accommodate the cape covering up my corduroy jumpsuit with a swoosh of sound.  My mom, however, leaned to whisper into the hair-stylist’s ear a suggestion that I can reasonably speculate to have been: “Actually, I was thinking of something a little more Three-Stoogy.”

eddie

The Kristy McNichol.  Circa Little Darlings.  I wasn’t even allowed to see it, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t try for my own version of prepubescent sexpot.  I mean, where else does one go when you’ve started with Farrah?  Apparently, the stylist thought one goes with Eddie Van Halen.

boozy soccer mom

The Barbara Carrera.  Circa Condorman.  Aka the Natalia.  Aka the movie no one else saw with the character no one else asked to look like.  Which explains the ambiguous nature of this haircut.  Does it want to be a mullet?  A pixie?  A shag?  How about all of the above just to cover all the bases?  Surely, in some way, from one angle or another, it resembles the wavy, flowing tresses of a vaguely-Eastern-European super spy.  I went to Whataburger right after this picture was taken at age eleven and got mistaken for a boozy soccer mom at the mustard and ketchup station.

molly

The Molly Ringwald.  Circa Sixteen Candles.  It would be many years before the Ringwald effect released its firm grip on my locks.  It never occurred to me that I was modeling myself after the girl most likely to be viciously snarled at by boys named Stefan.  Though if it hadn’t been the haircut that put me in similar standing in middle school, surely it would have been the hubcap-sized homemade Oreo Darla Myer had unveiled from the lunch bag she’d snatched out of my hands.  That thing was on display in the school cafeteria until it petrified.  Thanks mom!

mystic

Julia Roberts.  Circa Mystic Pizza.  Okay, so I got a little carried away.

Julia 1

Julia Roberts.  Circa Pretty Woman.  Julia had once steered my early John Hughes teen-hood into all-I-need-is-a-six-pack-and-a-smile territory.  How could I abandon her on my special day?

Julia 2

Julia Roberts.  Circa Dying Young.  I see this hair, and I hear Kenny G.

hook cut

Julia Roberts.  Circa Hook.  This would be the “career ender” cut.  The woman chops it off to play Tinker Bell and somehow this means she’s entered loony-town, never to return?  I was so incensed with the backlash that I stood in solidarity with a Hook-chop of my own.  And by that I mean I followed suit before I was aware that everyone else thought this was the worst haircut possible.

Blue

The Juliet Binoche.  Circa Blue.  On her it looks French chic, on me it looks like I’m finally growing out that bowl cut from kindergarten.

astronaut's w

The Charlize Theron.  Circa The Astronaut’s Wife.  A professor of mine at the time told me the quickness with which I changed hairstyles indicated that I was uncertain of my own identity.  But he was just saying that because he didn’t know me during the very long period I was certain I was Julia.

pulp fiction

The Uma Thurman.  Circa Pulp Fiction.  For one brief Halloween I achieved a look with a Betty Page wig and some Vamp nail-polish that, to this day, I would love to pull off full-time.  You know, taking the girls to school, going for a jog, giving “Eye of the Tiger” my best church-lady vocal on Rock Band.  All that’s missing is the five-dollar shake.  And a syringe in the chest.