Coifing It Up

DOES SHE OR DOESN’T SHE? That was the mystery in the 60s marketing campaign for a hair dye product. The answer: “Only her hairdresser knows for sure.”

beautyshoppe.jpg

That’s not the only mystery of the beauty shop that eludes me; my mental images are largely stereotypes from old sitcoms, movies and pop culture. One of those stereotypes is that women always take in a page they’ve ripped from a magazine of someone with a hairstyle they like and want to have as their own.

I don’t know why I imagine that. I can’t remember my mom ever doing that. Pretty much the most vivid childhood memory I have, related to hair-dos, was the smell of Aqua Net hairspray. Every Sunday, I remember arriving in our Ford Fairlane at the church parking lot in a cloud of the stuff, as mom would have given her do one last coat before stepping out into the Oklahoma wind. Speaking of Sundays, church and hair-dos, you’ve got to hand it to the preachers and their pompadours for style and impact. I guess they hoped that a combo of Elvis and Billy Graham would give them a winning and charismatic persona.

I can never remember my Amazing-Missus taking a photo of a particular hairstyle to her hairdresser and I’ve certainly never taken one to the barbershop, although as a teenager I wanted Paul McCartney hair.


There’s many a man has more hair than wit.
— William Shakespeare

Today, my hairstyle options are somewhat limited. The good news is it’s low maintenance and cheap. I cut it myself although I probably shouldn’t.


Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.
— George Burns

But what if you could opt for a different style, say something currently being rocked by a world “leader”. Here are three options and one not-even-close-to-a-world-leader, sporting what I call the “Pops”. Which of these photos would you take to your barber and say, “Yeah. This one!”