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Wildflower shampoos are nice, but some consumers will settle for Dr. Frankenstein's chemicals in their quest tor smooth, swingy locks.
I have a dream. My dream may not be as noble as Martin Luther King Jr.'s, but it is a dream nonetheless. It is one I've had since childhood and-perhaps Dr. King would smile knowingly and benignly on this-it is a dream of many other kids who did not grow up fitting the "all American" ideal of beauty, which, for girls at least, requires that most crowning achievement: a head of straight, smooth, swingy, golden locks. It is my undying desire to have that hair. To demonstrate to you non-verbally how much I lust for those locks, I would have to roll on my back, legs kicking the air (picture a struggling roach in a bug-spray commercial), while simultaneously rending my garments and wailing. It's not a pretty picture, but I think you get it.
I know I'm not alone in my obsession with Goldilocks tresses: Whoopi Goldberg does a bit that is as poignant as it is hilarious, in which she pretends to be a white girl endlessly tossing about her "beautiful" looooong golden hair, which is actually this schmatta-a plain ol' pillowcase, it looks like-flapping down her back. Yes, for Whoopi, me and millions more, "cheerleader hair" is a forever make-believe thing. Now, I don't know if the Whoopster seriously wants any hair other than her own, and, speaking for myself, you can skip the blonde part (I'm better as a brunette), but I am a fool for any product that promises, in a reasonably credible manner, to transform my fine, frizzprone, won't-grow-much-past-my-shoulders hair into a tossable waist-length mane.
As an adolescent, I'd force my mother to iron my hair straight ("You're nuts," she'd protest weakly). Maybe, but greater love hath no woman than to lay down her hair on an ironing board. Years later, I abandoned the board for beer-no, I wasn't drinking to forget my cruddy hair-I was setting it with the suds, which were supposed to give it more body. "Hey, where's the beer?" was my clueless father's constant query...