Just call me Fifi

To my knowledge, my maternal grandmother never had a dog, which is a shame because she obviously wanted a poodle. I know this because each year when I visited her, she did her best to turn me into one. She'd take one look at me and send me straight across the street from her Western Auto Store to her beauty shop. Miss Maxine was obviously in on the plot because she'd send me back looking as if my name should be Fifi. All that was missing was a rhinestone collar and the little pink bow that embarrasses even real poodles.

My hair did its half-hearted best to remain true to itself, to little avail. It was an unfriendly host to permanents without the courage to reject them completely, and within hours, the top part of my hair was once again stick straight while the ends remained frizzy, curl-like bends. I did not find them attractive. I don't remember anyone particularly caring what I thought about the matter, and even my mother's objections were overruled. There was also the fact that the permanents were smelly and painful. Once when I complained, my aunt, who liked the poodle look as well, told me that it hurt to be beautiful. I might could have accepted that, but I saw no point in undergoing pain if the end result was looking like a poorly groomed poodle. It was not lost on me that, however much they liked the style on me, not one of them adopted it for herself. Adding to my sense of injustice was the fact that somehow my sister and my cousins escaped this annual torture.

Years later, a boyfriend left me for a girl with beautiful naturally curly hair. I'm not sure what I was thinking—most likely I wasn't—but somewhere in my mind I figured that it was the curly hair that he'd left me for. If I had curly hair, maybe he'd come back. This time I did it to myself, with exactly the same result, but I looked even sillier because I was 2o years older. And this time friends actually did pat me on the head and call me Fifi.

Being dumped and humiliated was bad enough, but throw in really bad hair and it's pretty close to unbearable. I haven't been tempted since.