Beauty Tips for Wingwoman
Beat me with Marcia Brady's brush
This morning, I woke up in the wrong narrative. Can you imagine? The wrong narrative! I immediately knew whose it was. Cindy Noel Levine’s, my best friend from college.
I could tell it was hers because I woke up and blow dried my hair. That wasn’t the weird part. I took a shower first. I didn't just wake up and blow dry my dry hair. That would have been my aunt Sylvie’s narrative. If I woke up in my aunt Sylvie’s narrative, I would have grabbed a bottle of absinthe and gone back to bed.
I was still shocked, however. I never imagined I’d wake up in Cindy Noel Levine’s narrative. I didn’t even realize I still owned that blow dryer, brush, and curling iron. I’d bought them right before my grandpa died because he demanded it in his will.
I hadn’t even curled my hair since I played Bozo the Clown in a high school play. Someone had stolen my red wig from the drama closet the night before so I was forced to curl my hair and spray paint it red.
The play was outside and it ended up raining which caused my wig to bleed down my face, so we ended up performing Carrie instead. We either got a standing ovation or everybody ran away screaming.
We knew the AV club had stolen the red wig because they couldn’t get funding for their Annie production and we didn’t have one redhead in our town because our town's name meant kill all the redheads in Sanskrit. Bad planning for future Annie productions but who could have anticipated that in 1500 BCE?
I’m not a hair brusher by nature. I also think if you leave a glass of water out for two days, it purifies it. I’m more Sanford and Son than The Brady Bunch. Life is all about which TV show raised you. The Simpsons are raising my son, but that’s a different story.
I always thought Marcia Brady’s a hundred brushes a day rule was a compulsive disorder and I can’t believe how many girls I knew followed it. I’d sooner lick stamps all day or cut eyeballs out of magazines than spend half an hour brushing my hair and staring at my face in the mirror. My face never held my attention for that long. I can look into my eyes for about thirty seconds before I get bored, flip myself off, and find a snack.
My grandfather’s dying wish was for me to buy a hair care set. He told me he wouldn’t leave me any of the family's oil wells unless I bought a blowdryer, hairbrush, and curlers. He said I looked messy and made the family look like The Beverly Hillbillies. I guess that was his show. I hate working more than I hate hairbrushes, so I walked to Walgreens and armed myself with hair tech.
There was no contingency in the will that said I had to use those torture devices so I put them in a drawer until today. My grandpa must have pulled some strings in Heaven or Hell and found out I’d gamed the system. He probably met a fixer in Heaven of Hell who set me up with a different narrative. Gramps was a great businessman or conman — same thing.
So here I was following my BFF from college's narrative. I knew it was her because of how I was looking at my face in the mirror. I lingered. So this is what it’s like to be insanely beautiful, I thought, as I pushed my tangled hair through the brush. Pretty pretty me.
My best friend was a model, the kind of girl you only sat next to if you liked being invisible. I did. You can do anything when you’re invisible — fart, pick your nose, yank your underwear out of your crack. Pure freedom.
Brushing her hair and looking pretty paid for Cindy Noel Levine’s textbooks. If she didn’t brush her hair, someone would brush it for her. Like that lawyer rule — if you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. That’s how it is for models.
If they do not brush their own hair, a hairdresser chases them around with an enormous brush. Hairdressers can’t run very fast in their platform boots which is why the brush they chase the models with is so huge. They have to be able to brush the model’s hair from a block away.
Obviously, that’s terrifying for the model who is starving and has no interest in calorie-burning activities like running away from a hairdresser. Usually, they end up collapsing onto the ground.
The hairdresser then tosses them into a wheelbarrow and rolls them back to the salon where they brush feverishly until the model wakes up. You couldn’t pay me to get paid for my looks. I know, redundant.
When I was little and had long hair, girls with short hair or Afros would sit behind me in gym class and brush my scraggly hair. In the 70s, that was the choice for girls in gym — hair brushing, or jump rope. That’s why I’m brush averse.
Other people can’t feel how hard they’re yanking your hair off your scalp. It’s not their head. I do it to my dog now. The difference is she bites me when I cause her pain. I wasn’t allowed to bite in Chicago Public Schools or they’d send me to the special room.
The special room was where the school put everybody who had any issues — learning disabilities, peed in their chair, saw parents get shot, spoke a different language, kids in mid-divorce, smokers, boys who wore skirts, artists — basically anyone.
There were more kids in the special room than in the unspecial rooms by the end of the year. Anyone was at risk of being sent there. It was like solitary confinement but with other people. It was like an insane asylum where everyone was sane but suspicious their cohorts were not. It was a practice room for purgatory.
I wonder if I should have mentioned scalping in my college applications when I had no extracurricular or marginalized experiences. I’ve learned to embellish since then but, back in the day, I thought applications possessed a magical quality that could tell if you were fabricating your narrative. Looking back, I realized applications are the first fiction some people ever write.
Today, I woke up in Cindy Noel Levine's narrative. I don’t know how the world works, but I know it’s rigged. I can promise you that. Ask anyone who needs something and isn’t getting it. Ask anyone who’s lost an election. It’s rigged. It’s all rigged.
You know who I really feel sorry for though? Cindy Noel Levine. If she woke up as me, she’s going to be banging her beautiful head against the wall by the end of the day trying to figure out what’s funny about the world. It’s gonna hurt more than a hairbrush.
"You can do anything when you’re invisible — fart, pick your nose, yank your underwear out of your crack. Pure freedom." I loved this whole thing!
Such a fun read! Loved it!