What I Most Wish I Could Ask My Dad
The most important question of all!!! (part something of many)
I’ve been writing quite a bit about not knowing I was Jewish until I was in my early twenties (my dad told me we weren’t) and what that means as I get older and raise my own children. I have a lot of questions and unfortunately my dad is no longer here to answer them.
But the one I really wish I could ask him? When you straightened your hair for your wedding, was that the first time? Because we all know that is a major don’t. A new ‘do before a big event??? Are you nuts???
It came up because this morning we were driving my son to his oral surgery appointment (it went well although it was intense for me, personally, and also him I think) and we began talking about Tîmøthée Chalåmét whose name I refuse to google.
Elliot said he wished he had Tîmøthée Chalåmét’s hair. Daniel said that Elliot could easily have Tîmøthée Chalåmét’s hair (not with Tîmøthée attached) and that he also always wished he had that kind of hair.
“You mean floppy?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Daniel.
Daniel has curly hair that won’t swoop or flop. It grows out not down.
“My dad always wished he had floppy hair, too” I recalled. And then I shared that he’d even straightened his hair for his wedding and I began to wonder about the specifics of the Great Wedding Straightening of 1972.
I’ve written about how averse my dad was taking risks—so averse he thought it safer I believe I wasn’t Jewish—so would he have taken this kind of serious gamble with his lewk?
And if not, if this was not the first time, how often was he straightening his hair? Was this a regular thing? Or did he maybe try it on the run up to the wedding in the same way one might get a facial a few months before but never right before? (My own wedding makeup artist told me with horror that my skin was WAY too dry, she touched it and then recoiled and then touched again, and so I had to follow a specific wedding protocol so, one assumes, she could spackle my sandpaper face without damaging her hands or makeup brushes or whatever.)
But see, in the back of my head is the timeworn knowledge that my dad straightened his hair for the wedding. Not that he regularly straightened his hair, as I do. (Japanese straightening also called Yuko also called Thermal Reconditioning. I have also tried Brazilian/Keratin.)
On the one hand, the fact that I haven’t seen my natural hair in 19 years has nothing to do with being Jewish. On the other it actually does have to do with being Jewish if you want to get sociological about it, which I don’t really. But certainly I am not the first to have turned my back on my curls and to know the difference between an open and closed rhinoplasty. (FTR I still have my original issue vintage post war nose but I’m obsessed with planning this imaginary nose job I’m always maybe going to one day get.)
What do I have against my curls? Honestly nothing except I look better without them. Also do you know how hard it is to make day-two curls look good? It’s a whole fucking thing. Plus you need something my hairstylist from many moons ago called a “sliquid” which is a kind of liquid gel and if you overdo it, your curls look wet and crunchy all day. If you underdo it, I don’t know. I’m sure some kind of follicular calamity ensues.
In college, I zagged and began using mousse. I would mousse it up and then turn over and dry my hair with a diffuser. I still don’t know what mousse is supposed to do and what kind of hair it’s best for but it made my frizz-prone hair even frizzier. And then I pulled half of it up in a very specific way while leaving two chunks out near the front before fastening it in a mini claw clip.
You know how you never know exactly what you look like and also what you smell like? A good college friend told me I always smelled good and like hair products. I suspect I smelled like a whole hair salon given the sheer magnitude of mousse I was using. (A thought for another day but are we all in agreement that drugstore shampoo smells so much better than salon shampoo? I will now name ancient shampoos: Finesse, Agree, Prell, etc.)
Around this time I became sexually active which is shocking, given my hair.
Wow, this really went in a direction I didn’t expect it to go, especially the previous sentence, but it’s just I can so clearly remember that feeling of beginning to date in what felt like a real way after a lifetime of feeling like my maturity was in cold storage. And it’s so tightly woven to that unfortunate hairdo.
Obviously pics will be coming next, once I dig them up.
Did you know that I ask my podcast guests to suggest a favorite product and then I round them all up here?
I just bought this. WHO AM I?
This remains the best purchase I made last year.
I have a code for RAKUTEN! I use this for all online purchases and it gives you a small amount of money back. It seems to good to be true but people I trust swear by it and it’s legit. I’ve already made a few hundred bucks (or saved a few hundred, I guess). If you sign up through my code then we both get 30 dollars after you make some purchases.
Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend APPLE SPOTIFY (this past week’s Thursday show was super fun)
Childish with Greg Fitzsimmons: APPLE SPOTIFY
5th Anniversary edition of my book! (recently released, please review it I BEG OF YOU)
My New Merch Store (some new merch is in there)
New skincare/makeup/haircare storefront
Products I Recommend (updated)
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NOT the point of your (moving) story, but: whoa — Agree Shampoo and Conditioner!! That print ad propels me back to age 8. I can even smell it in my mind's nose. (?) Those drugstore grade chemical fragrants are eternally lodged in my DNA.
Omg! I loved Agree Shampoo. Oh and Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific. Yum-my!