I didn't realize I had curly hair until 1964, when the Beatles arrived in the U.S. Then it became an embarrassment. I wore a hat the entire summer of '66, at the end of which my parents allowed me to get my hair straightened at a beauty shop because I really wanted to enter junior high with straight hair. After the ordeal, I dashed into the house, asking Mom, "How does it look?" She paused. For a long time. I'll never forget the words: "It looks the same." I ran to the bathroom mirror, stunned to see that in the 10 minutes it had taken to go from beauty shop to home, it had all "turned."
For years thereafter I slept with large rollers in my hair. But when I discovered my inner hippie, I let my freak flag fly into long ringlets. By the summer of '70, my younger sister and I couldn't go anywhere without someone asking us, "How do you get your hair to do that?" Years later everyone assumed we had "permed" hair.
To this day I wear it curly and occasionally wind-blown wild. Proud of my Jewish hair.
I didn't realize I had curly hair until 1964, when the Beatles arrived in the U.S. Then it became an embarrassment. I wore a hat the entire summer of '66, at the end of which my parents allowed me to get my hair straightened at a beauty shop because I really wanted to enter junior high with straight hair. After the ordeal, I dashed into the house, asking Mom, "How does it look?" She paused. For a long time. I'll never forget the words: "It looks the same." I ran to the bathroom mirror, stunned to see that in the 10 minutes it had taken to go from beauty shop to home, it had all "turned."
For years thereafter I slept with large rollers in my hair. But when I discovered my inner hippie, I let my freak flag fly into long ringlets. By the summer of '70, my younger sister and I couldn't go anywhere without someone asking us, "How do you get your hair to do that?" Years later everyone assumed we had "permed" hair.
To this day I wear it curly and occasionally wind-blown wild. Proud of my Jewish hair.