A Shining Example

Since my TV was updated and I now have more channels I find that I watch a lot more TV which means a lot more commercials. One commercial I’ve seen which has brought up a few memories is the Bosley hair restoration infomercial.

When I was a child I didn’t get hair cuts. I was to have long hair and could only wear pants twice a week. I could choose which two days. While I don’t see forced skirts and dresses as abusive or even feel ill towards my mother for requiring them I do feel the sting of her requirements that my hair be a certain length. Even when it reached the set length it wasn’t good enough. My hair needed to be a shining example for other little girls and their mothers. They needed to look at me and know what they should be doing and how they should present themselves. I was to be an example in speech, dress and manners. I was to be picture perfect and show the world how to be picture perfect, show them how they don’t have to be simple.

Standing in a row like contestants on Jeopardy, my cousins, my sister and I stood waiting to answer questions by the piano in my grandmother’s dining room. If my sister and I didn’t excel at the questions asked by my aunts then we were badgered and berated all the way home. Her well dressed children with perfect hair failed her and made her look stupid. We were just a couple of perfectly dressed stupid kids.

When my sister and I played school it was more of a preparation for family games so we didn’t come off looking like total idiots for missing a single question. If I did better than my sister she heard about it which put yet another rift between us. The thing she had over me was she was string bean thin and drop dead beautiful. I was considered cute but not beautiful. Being cute and smart saved me from being the target of vile words but it didn’t save me from hearing my sister reduced to nothing for missing a few questions at a family organized Jeopardy game. During the game I remember standing in my spot thinking, “Dear God don’t ask me to spell anything. Just don’t ask me to spell anything.” Had they I would have taken my place beside my sister during my mother’s verbal assaults because I couldn’t and still can’t spell worth a lick.

Despite being “smart” and “cute” I still had a flaw. She was never happy with my hair. One day she came home with a brochure that showed laser restoration for men and women. She told me she set up an appointment for me to go in and have a consult so as to make my hair acceptable and conceal my shame. My hair was long but it wasn’t thick like my sisters. She wanted the hair restoration doctors to give me thick hair like my sister’s hair. The consultant showed us around the office and showed me the chair I’d sit in while he put the laser on my scalp. He then opened a book, the same type used to show carpet samples and showed us different textures of black hair. The mother was unsatisfied with them all so we left.  At his office she didn’t find a way to fix me and figured there would never be a doctor who could give me the hair she wanted me to have. It was then that I began wearing hats on a regular basis to cover up what she felt was shameful.

fma

A Shining Example – Saturday, November 14, 2009 – 12:41midnight EST