Dippety Do and Helmet Hair

I got up this morning early to color my hair. I've had good experiencing with coloring my own hair and some nightmares. Although I have sprung for coloring in a salon a few times, most of my life, from the age of fifteen, I've been doing my own. Believe it or not, Avon used to sell hair color, and my mom used to sell Avon. All my friends were using Sun-kissed (You spray it on, lie down in the sun, and gradually end up with really brassy blonde hair), but I wanted something not so drastic. My mom bought me some Avon Dark Blonde, which was a shade lighter than my normal light brown. I loved it. The next time I colored, it got a little lighter, then a little more, until I spent all my teen years as a medium blonde. Long, straight hair was the fashion. That's good, because my hair was long, extremely straight, would not hold a curl, and I had no idea how to style it.

I watched what other women in my family did with their hair. My grandmother sat at the kitchen table while my mother put in a Toni Home Permanent and then rolled her hair into pin curls secured with bobby pins to style it. (All the time my mom was perming and setting, she would yell that Mom was pulling her bald-headed.) Then she would comb it straight back, making waves with her fingers, and put on a white "invisible" hairnet. At least once during all this, she would swear she wished she was a man, so she could wear a crewcut all the time.


My sister slathered her hair in Dippety Doo and used wire rollers with pink piks to hold the rollers. Then she put a gigantic elastic cap over this, hooked a hose from it to the dryer unit, and turned it on.

It would blow out bigger and she'd sit with this contraption on her head until her hair was dry. This was followed by a lot of teasing (with a rat tail comb of course), curling up her flip with her fingers, and then spraying with a lot of Aqua Net hairspray. After this, no hair moved on her head, even in the wind, even when she moved her head suddenly.

My mom went to the beauty shop every week, where they colored, "washed and set" her hair. She always fell asleep under the dryer. They kept walking by and shoving her head back under the hot helmet so it would dry.

This was followed by a lot of teasing, a lot of Aqua Net, and polyester pillow cases to keep the hair from getting messy.

Drying hair was interesting. Usually, I just washed mine, combed it, and let it dry. I couldn't see sitting under the huge plastic cap my sister used, and I hadn't yet seen a handheld dryer. In the winter when it was really cold, I would flip my hair upside down in front of our floor level space heater and brush it while it dried. Yes, this left it slightly frizzy, but it dried.

My girlfriend, Dolores, said she would kill for my straight hair (in the early Cher days), and used to roll her hair on the cans that frozen orange juice came in to keep her red curls from curling.

Then came frosting kits. We all had to try this. I did my own and then two of my friends. Mine and one friend's hair turned out great. The other friend turned out green, and she spent the next two days at the beauty shop trying to fix it. (You notice I still referred to her as friend, as she knew my home treatments had no warranty, and I am almost positive she lied about having color on her hair already.)


I remember the Christmas I got a bright orange handheld dryer with brush and comb attachments and a set of hot rollers. I switched from the space heater to my new "Orangie" and was so happy that I could now wash my hair when something last minute came up. The hot rollers were a nightmare. The little metal hoop pins didn't hold the roller in the hair, the rollers got really hot, and the metal center (if you were so lucky as to stick your finger near it) would end up with a roller tossed across the bathroom and me in trouble for cursing.

Plus, my super straight hair really preferred to be super straight, so the electric roller curl only lasted about twenty minutes ( I refused Aqua-net "metal helmut" Spray.)

I remember the first time I found hairspray that let your hair still move, Velcro rollers,and curling irons. I recently found a little gadget that lets you do a french twist on your own hair with only two bobby pins (and the gadget).

So what did I do to my hair this morning? I made it straight, and blonde, and am letting it air dry. Guess I haven't come such a long way after all.