I don’t know where you’ve been for the last four years, but I also don’t care. The last time you took a “break” you spewed some awful nonsense at us about killing your neighbor for trapping your monkeys and it landed you in the local insanitarium house and blah, blah, blah. Spare us this time please. Just get back here and answer our questions. We need help!
So here goes…I’m a middle-aged woman, six-foot-seven, and super sassy. I was raised to never cut my hair and always wear ankle-length flower-print dresses (sometimes on fun days or marathon practicing, I splurge and go with my floor length denim skirt). I still adhere strictly to those values and even raise my kids to think the same. Anyways, you can probably imagine that without a single haircut in 44 years, my hair is very, very long by any standard; 12 feet 3 inches to be exact. I was cursed with straight, black hair, and it’s a safety hazard in almost every situation—I get it caught in the car door and drive on it, it gets wrapped and tangled around the axles of grocery store carts, people step on it and curse at me…all kinds of stuff. The locals don’t even bother with my name anymore; they just call me The Hair Beast. I’ve tried everything I can think of, shy of cutting it, which I will never, ever do. I usually just end up stuffing it in a gigantic back pack, or I make my kids grab some and carry it around the mall behind me. Is there ANYTHING I can do to safely live my hair values? Please, oh please help me.
-Gerty Von Doogan – Skunk Tooth, AR
Hairbeast,
Holy Hair. My first thought, which is almost always on-the-money but will certainly fall on deaf ears in this case, is to advise you to cut your hair, weirdo. Your values are just, well, beyond comprehension (sidenote: I would pay a bag of pirate gold to see you running a marathon in that get-up). That said, if the solution space can’t include a hair-chop and a makeover, let’s get down to business. As I see it, you have three options and they’re all amazing: the “braid belt”, the “double tuck” and the “ultimate perm”.
The braid belt is pretty much what it sounds like. Braiding that mangled mess will take you forever and only buy you about eight inches off the back end, so you’ll need to wrap the resulting pony tail around your waist at least five times and pass it off as a belt. It’ll probably work. Double tucking is even less complicated—tuck it in at the neck and let it drape down your back inside your dress...tuck the rest into your panties. Just being truthful, you’re going to have a huge, bulging ball of hair in your bungies, but I've seen this work for a select few. The ultimate perm requires professional help, and frankly, your headshot isn’t going to land in any style magazines when it’s done. Perms went out with the 80’s, but most stylists can probably wing it. It’ll cost you a bundle, and with that much hair, I honestly have no idea what it will look like. Probably not good. Anyways, Let me know which one you choose and how it works out for you.
As an aside, I’m back. Ask and be free my friends…
-gvd