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| Mia Culpa-Farrow |
If I’d been old enough to understand how curses work, I
would have cursed Mia Farrow and the super-short hairstyle that women the world over would copy, well into the 1970s.
At six years old, I lacked the words (and physical strength) to challenge my mother as she allowed the hairdresser to chop off my long curls. I remember staring into the salon mirror, too proud to cry, but my face like thunder, as the stylist thinned what hair was left, into that voguish waif cut.
At home, I sat at my dressing table, telling Barbie, Sindy and Chrissy (the doll whose hair could grow just by pressing a button in her back) how upset I was, all the while combing, combing, combing what was left of my hair in the belief this would somehow hasten the regrowth.
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| Cindy Brady rockin' the rope ribbons |
By the following year, I had enough hair to wear The Pageboy – another ugly, but super-popular style of the 70s. Better still, I reached that milestone that female victims of Very Short Hair know all too well: my hair was now jusssssst long enough to pull into a ponytail, without ‘bits’ falling short of the elastic. With great joy, I added the touch d’jour: a rope ribbon. I think elsewhere they were known as soft wool ribbons? Although ropelike in shape, they were very soft to the touch.
I didn’t know any girl who’d wear pigtails, plaits or a ponytail, without
dressing it up. Baubles and ribbons were the finishing touch. If you wore your hair down, matching barrettes were the way to go. Teachers made an enormous fuss if your hair fell anywhere near your face. Long fringes, we were told, could lead to blindness. At this point, we began falling into two camps: girls with conformist hair, and those with The Shag. I thought The Shag (and "The Lioness") looked pretty exciting, but flashbacks to my last Major Haircut left me shy of scissors coming anywhere remotely close to my shoulders.
So the majority of us clung to our lengthy locks. Our mothers longed for us to forever wear pigtails that sat high and springy
above our ears, but as you got closer to – say – ten years of age, the pigtails
became big bunches of hair that sat lower on your head, and much closer to your
face. Thus you had graduated from being
Cindy to being Marcia.
And if that doesn’t make sense ... you weren’t a child of the seventies
