The post office

Significant things that happened at the post office today:

1. I mailed the check to activate my very first month of my very own individual, independent health insurance plan. It's f***ing expensive, but it's mine, I chose it all by myself (which was much more challenging than it sounds), and I love it.

2. I returned the contract to the publisher for my very first book project. No, it's not a book length version of Undercover Blonde, or the LUPEC book project, it's definitely not what I ever would have imagined my first book project to be, and I'm just a "researcher" on it. But it's my first one and for that reason, I love it too.

3. I sold my engagement ring setting. You know, this thing?

That has been lying around my apartment acting as a paperweight for all of my bills collecting dust? I FINALLY sent it in to this website which I read about in Daily Candy a really long time ago.

The post office woman looked at me like I was crazy when I told her I wanted to insure the humble looking box I used to send it. When the transaction was complete, she threw it into the bin of mail behind her as if it was just some piece of junk and walked away.

That's it? I thought. I stood on my tiptoes and peered over the counter at the box laying atop a mountain of small envelopes. For a second I considered waving someone over to ask for it back, but all of the post office personnel had mysteriously disappeared. Yup, that's it.

Then I burst into tears. I guess the sudden meaninglessness of a piece of jewelry that had once been so significant just got to me. Or perhaps it's because tossing that old thing in the mail symbolized that I am finally, truly moving on from the relationship that defined my 20s. And the end of an era is always a little bit sad. I cried the entire way home.

Then, when I got home, I popped open a bottle of cava to celebrate because I really love my life right now, and I'm twice the woman I used to be.

So I raised a glass to myself, without whom none of this would be possible.

sticks and stones

In middle school I was fat. I got teased a lot and it was terrible. But ultimately, being a fat kid made me a stronger, more empathetic person.

Or did it? I mean, the empathetic part is true: I remember very vividly how it felt to be called mean names and treated like I didn't matter, and now go out of my way to say positive things to people and make them feel important and at ease (perhaps this is the key to my success as a publicist?)

But I don't know if being fat as a kid has made me much stronger. For example, if mean Jimmy pushed me into a row of lockers and said, "Move it you fat cow," while walking past me in a crowded hallway, I'd pretty much just want to shrivel up and die. My faculties of reason and wit would completely desert me, and I'd just stand there, jaw open, ready to cry, like a STUPID, WIMPY fat cow.

between agreeing with mean Jimmy ("I am a fat cow and everybody knows it") and blaming myself ("why can't I just be thinner? tomorrow I'm going to try that new anorexia thing I've been hearing so much about") and imagining all of the amazing things I could have and should have said that would have put mean Jimmy in his place ("at least my mom's not my sister", "nice rat-tail, Then, I'd spend the remainder of the day obsessing over Jimmy's comment. I'd vascillatedouchebag", all manner of shameless, flagrant vulgarity.) Sometimes I'd practice saying those things in my head, imagining elaborate scenarios that ended with mean Jimmy in tears and a crowded hallway full of people applauding for me, doing their best to hoist my fat ass up in the air to parade me around the school on their shoulders as their hero.

I never mastered the art of the quick, snappy comeback, and no such thing happened.

Not to dwell on yesterday's news, but it occurred to me after I wrote of the Mystery Man that I felt the exactly same way after he called me a bad waitress as I did when getting picked on so many years ago. (And when the post got excerpted on Universal Hub and an "anonymous" commenter said means things about me, I felt the same way again. And so on...)

And I realized that I really use this blog as a way to get back at those people. It's a venue for all of the wonderful, unspoken rebuttals I have for the massive pricks out who keep on pushing me into lockers. Sure, I may stare at you blankly like a stupid fat cow in the moment, but my wrath will eventually be heard.

After all, isn't that what the Internet is for? To help those who were geeks and losers in high school to inherit the earth?

fireworks

The lavish setting: a 500 square foot private roof deck overlooking the Charles River. Below us, Storrow Drive. Beyond that, the Esplanade flooded with people. Beyond that, the enormous fireworks barge, the City of Cambridge, and the vast, open sky.

It is a gourmet affair. The food is exquisite, the company (I am told) "important", and the wine delicious.

When the fireworks finally start popping overhead they are so close, the ones with trickling glittery tendrils seem to spill all the way over to where we stand, ready to rain bits of fire on our heads. The "Grande Finale" is so grand, it completely obscures the sky with smoke. It's just noise and black clouds, really, with a hint of pink or green poking through between the edges.

A gorgeous, glorious event, but there's something missing: the smell of grass. Growing up we watched fireworks from a blanket in a park in New Jersey, or the middle of Keye's Field in Milford, or some indeterminate pasture in Southern Vermont. I'd dig my hands into the grass beside the blanket, pull up tiny strands and twist them into knots.

I'm not exactly sure how I got here tonight, to this urbane place. It's exquisite and I feel lucky to visit. I also feel nostalgic for grass.

Photo from Boston.com, Globe Staff Photo/Yoon S. Byun

Old friends

The first time I ever hung out with Mary we were fourteen years old. She had just moved to Amherst, NH and she hated me because she thought I was "too nice."

Then we decided to hang out one night. We got stoned (my first time), watched Dirty Dancing, and ate raw cookie dough out of the Pillsbury tube. Thereafter we were inseparable.

Mary is visiting me from Portland, OR this week. Tonight we decided to chase that feeling.

Incidentally, when I caught up with Mary for the first time in half a decade about a year ago and told her about my Undercover Blonde project, she just laughed: "I don't get it, Kir. To me, you were always blonde."

my favorite blonde...

"Well, if it isn't my favorite blonde!" a familiar voice booms behind me. I turned around from the computer screen, where I am frantically typing in Table 40s order -- one of my favorite Boston chefs is standing behind me.

"Hey you! What's up? How are you? Long time no see!" I greet him with a big hug and a kiss. He is here tonight for the private, friends and family exclusive screening of Iron Chef America: the Ken Oringer edition. LOTS of chefs are here, actually, as well as various other "important" city folk -- owners of sports teams, former investors, important friends who go way, way back with my boss -- hey, I don't need to know the back story, all I need to know is that almost every single person in here is SUPER VIP. They are mixing and mingling with various & sundry restaurant industry professionals, regulars, parents, cousins, etc.

And I am in an incarnation of Waitress Hell. The place is so packed & congested that my job -- serving said VIPs dinner -- has become next to impossible. I can't hear a word my VIPs are saying over the ruckus, it takes five minutes to get to their table to check on them in the first place because the dining room has become a veritable obstacle course, and no one really wants to talk to me in the first place once I get there -- I keep getting in someones way, blocking the view of the TV. I have never been good at video games, with their car chases & incessant burrowing, but tonight I feel like I'm in one, dodging chairs and rich peoples' suit lapels with hands full of dirty plates -- don't drop that paella pan! One misstep and it could land in a famous person's lap. Total cluster-fuck.

Then the blonde comment. And suddenly I am transported from Waitress Hell into my blonde universe -- Undercover Blonde land, where all I think about is hair, in service of this project & my book. I recall the tentative first time I referred to myself as a blonde in public, wondering if they'd stop me, interrupt me, correct me -- Would they bust me as an underneath-it-all brunette...? How devious & satisfying it felt to get away with it.

Gee, I'm his favorite blonde! I think. Then again, I bet he says that to all the girls. Still, I'm delighted. I've known this chef since long before the blonde project began -- I wonder if he remembers me from back then? I wonder if he's noticed a difference?

blonde wisdom: Meryl Streep

I didn't have any confidence in my beauty when I was young. I felt like a character actress, and I still do.
- Meryl Streep














I think the most liberating thing I did early on was to free myself from any concern with my looks as they pertained to my work.
- Meryl Streep























Instant gratification is not soon enough.
- Meryl Streep

toro blondes

I worked tonight at Toro. We were super busy. The place was packed, four deep at the bar from 8 p.m. to 11. Only at the end of the night did I have time to look up and survey the scene around me. When I finally did, I realized: the place was packed with beautiful women, a reasonable percentage of which were light, almost platinum blondes. Three in particular caught my eye, all levels 10 at least, with very minimal highlighting. All of whom struck me as artificial, contrived.

"Wow," I said to my colleague Sarah. "Those women are so blonde." I thought back to a time when I just filled in at Toro, two summers ago in 2006 when I picked up shifts to help out my friend, the general manager. I counted the blondes then, tallying their color, viewing the light blondes with a competitive eye. I thought about the women in the restaurant now, about the sheer volume of processing that goes into an entire head of 12-14-inch hair that looks like that. It cost her thousands of dollars to look that way, I thought. And still, those roots.

"I'm not that blonde, am I?" I asked Sarah.

"No, no you're not," Sarah said. Then she looked like she felt bad, as though she was afraid she's hurt my feelings. Apologetically she offered, "You could be that blonde, with some highlights. Next time you go in, just ask for more highlights."

"No, it's cool," I said. "I don't want to be that blonde anymore. I used to be that blonde and I loved it. But not anymore. That's not who I want to be."

wordless wednesday...

bunny leblanc

My best friend's Grandma passed away this week. Since my own grandparents died when I was very young she was like a surrogate grandmother to me. So of course I wanted to pay my respects at the memorial services held in her honor at Manchester Country Club this afternoon.

After a brief eulogy the officiant encouraged us all to make our way up to the podium to share our very own thoughts and memories about Bernadette "Bunny" Crowley, nee LeBlanc. "It can be anything," she coaxed, "a special story you have about Bunny, something in your daily life that will always remind you of her, any happy memories of her that you may have. Anything."

Her voice sounded so earnest as she tried to get us all to participate (presumably to deflect any of the inherent awkwardness present in any funereal setting.) And truly, I wanted to be brave for my best friend, for her wonderful mother, for their entire family, and to step up to the podium (and minimize that awkwardness), take the mic in my hand and share my very own Grandma memories.

I thought long and hard about what my talking points would be. And I realized: the things I remembered best about Grandma were the bawdy things she used to say to me, not one of which would be appropriate to share in the middle of a high-class country club in front of god-fearing people gathered for a religious memorial service.

So I'll share them here:

About any moderately-attractive-to-good-looking man: "He's handsome! He can put his shoes under my bed anytime!"

When asked about her affinity for romance novels: "I'm old! I gotta get my kick somehow!!!"

Her answer when I foolishly asked if she was part Irish: "Irish? Oh, no, no, no, my husband was Irish. I'm all French -- French Canadian. But I'm Irish by injection!"

Thinking about Grandma now, I realize: this wonderful, vibrant, elderly woman was our very own bold, brazen, in-the-flesh Mae West. Unlike any other woman I've ever met, but exactly how I hope to be when I'm in my 80s.

I guess with a name like Bunny LeBlanc, what do you expect? With a name like Kitty, do you think I'm already predestined for such greatness?

the blonde of the week: Queen Elizabeth I of England

The Virgin Queen. Gloriana. The Faerie Queen. Good Queen Bess. These were nicknames for Queen Elizabeth I of England, one of England's most beloved royals and a legend in her own time. Queen Elizabeth was also a blonde.

Or was she?

"Attentive schoolgirls may remember being told that Queen Elizabeth I had auburn hair," writes Joanna Pittman in ON BLONDES. Indeed, early portraits of the Queen such as this one, thought to have been painted by Elizabethan female court painter, Levina Teerling when Elizabeth was thirteen, show her as a bona fide redhead.

So...what happened? Queen Elizabeth was a brilliant self-promoter, that's what. Right around the time England defeated the Spanish armada, thus forever cementing her association with one of the greatest victories in British history, Queen Elizabeth made the transition into blonde. At the time she was 55-years old, her real hair already grey and thinning. But she will be remembered for time immortal, thanks to her large, trusty collection of wigs, as an ageless, wrinkle-free blonde.

Elizabeth's reign was recognized by her public as one of "exceptional prudence and felicity", but it was the Armada defeat of 1588 that sealed the deal for Queen Bess. According to Pittman, "it provided the final impetus for the creation of a Queen Elizabeth cult."

Why did Elizabeth choose blonde? Because in 16th century England the color held potent, powerful symbolism. In addition to being a key component of the Elizabethan ideal of femininity, it also conferred a non-negligible association between the Queen and all things holy. As you may recall, the Queen never married: she pitted suitors against one another throughout her lifetime in the end rebuffing them all. At age fifty-one she refused the hand of her final suitor (the French Duke of Anjou, a man half her age) and her foreign policy ministers finally took the hint: the Queen would never marry.

Thereafter Queen Eliz became immortalized as "the Virgin Queen" and subsequently deified for her virtuous piety. Scared images of Christ, the saints, and the Virgin Mary had recently been "removed from England's churches and rejected as idolatry", leaving ample room for a new brand of virgin-worship: the cult of Queen Elizabeth.

Throughout her life Queen Elizabeth keep close tabs on artistic representations of her image throughout the kingdom. It is rumored that she had her public relations officer issue a "pattern book by which officially sanctioned artists would be able to produce 'correct' images ." In 1596, towards the end of her life, she had "unseemly portraits sought out by government officers" and turned into fuel for the fire.

In official portraits her likeness marched on: aloof, otherworldly, and in increasingly lighter shades of blonde. They were produced with perhaps even greater vigor after her death. Writes Pittman:

"She was a golden ruler of a golden age, and her blonde hair was part of this divine unreality."

why I love the Patriots

I don't follow football at all (or any sport for that matter) unless one of the hometown teams is playing, it's the end of the season, and the game matters a lot. But I have to say, I am so excited about the season that the Patriots had this year (even though I didn't realize the magnitude of their success until like, last week) and I am so hoping that they win. All of this despite the fact that I am a Jersey girl, born and bred and should probably be rooting for the Giants of my youth. Here's how my unlikely fandom came to pass...

For out-of-towners, it may be easy to hate the Patriots of the last decade or so. They've had a consistently excellent record (I think) and have won several Super Bowls since 2002 or so (I'm pretty sure.) However, when this Jersey girl first moved to New Hampshire 1990, the Patriots sucked. They were a sad, sorry joke. I remember hearing natives claim the Patriots as their favorite team, and just feeling bad for these New Hampshirites with their funny accents and their lame sports teams. How sad it must feel to have your loyalty hitched to such a pathetic team.

But in retrospect, I see that the Patriots were just at a different point in their lifespan. Much like how I was when I first moved here. I was eleven years old, at the height of the notoriously, impossibly awkward stage that is pre-pubescenece when I first moved to New England. I had crooked teeth and frizzy hair that I sculpted into an unsuccessful wall of bangs. I was a few pounds overweight but in my own mind I was grossly obese, and a head taller than my twin and all the other boys in my class. Some children managed to take this kind of awkwardness in stride by becoming the boisterous, funny fat girl or the charming new kid in town that everyone likes. Not me: I wore my horribly low self-esteem on the sleeve of my over-sized grey hooded sweatshirt with wolf's face silk-screened on the chest. I had absolutely no self-confidence. In my own mind, I sucked as much as the Patriots did. And many of my brutal middle school peers did little to make me think otherwise.

Well a lot has changed around here in the past seventeen years. Those lame, losing Pats ended up with an incredible coach and world famous quarterback who is dating Gisele, the world's most famous supermodel. They are now a team that hands competitors their asses. I, too grew up: got hot, have a rich boyfriend, and am living out my dream or becoming a writer (that one hangs in the balance, mind you, but still...)

So you see? The Pats and I have a lot in common. And just as I just know the rest of my life will be as good as those interminable awkward years were bad, I just know the Pats are going to kick some ass tonight.

But if they don't win, who cares? At least they've earned the respect of the entire NFL, and become a team beside which all other teams pale in comparison.

Go Pats!

disengaged

dis·en·gage /ˌdɪsɛnˈgeɪdʒ/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[dis-en-geyj] -gaged, -gag·ing. –verb (used with object)

1.	to release from attachment or connection; loosen; unfasten: to disengage a clutch.

2.	to free (oneself) from an engagement, pledge, obligation, etc.: He accepted the invitation, but was later forced to disengage himself.

3.	Military. to break off action with (an enemy).

–verb (used without object)

4.	to become disengaged; free oneself.

My relationship with the Ex ended a little over two years ago now. We have for the most part made amends. Every so often, we even talk on the phone -- he called me two months ago about a potential job opportunity at the New York branch of his company, for example. I'd say things are exactly where they need to be...but for one small, potently symbolic thing: the ring.

What exactly does one do with an engagement ring after their engagement has fallen apart?

When I broke the news to my friends that I was to leaving my fiance, they all were in unanimous agreement: I should keep the ring. It's interesting how worked up people get on the topic, actually. Time and again friends said things like "You'd better keep the damn thing!" or "You didn't give the ring back, did you???" GASP!! HORRORS! I was actually amazed at how important people seemed to think it was that I hold on to that expensive little piece of jewelry. As though it was somehow owed to me by his inability to follow through on his marriage promise.

Had the ring been purchased under more normal circumstances (my fiance decides to propose to me; he ventures out to the ring store and spends two months worth of his salary on a sizable diamond ring; he gets down on one knee and proposes) I would have had a much more difficult time doing as my friends advised. Since we had an unorthodox engagement (we both thought we were going to die during September 11th; in a frenzied period of fear and desperation I told him I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him; my sister in law gifted us a very large diamond that she somehow just had lying around; he got it set a few months later and gave it to me on Valentine's Day) I had no problem keeping the thing. But what to do with it when I no longer wanted to wear it?

For a long time it sat in a little glass dish with some knotted up necklaces and other costume jewelry on a plastic vanity shelf in my bathroom. I didn't think about it much. Sometimes after applying mascara and before dotting perfume on my wrists when heading out the door for a date with the Matehmatician, I'd stick my hand into the bowl and rattle it around, just to make sure the ring was still there. There's probably a better place to keep this thing, I'd think, then I'd dash out the door and move on with my night.

For a brief period after I moved into my new apartment last winter, it just sat on the mantle above the non-functioning fireplace in my bedroom. Out in the open. Exposed. Hanging out on the shelf with nothing better to do.

For a while I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do with the ring. Should I sell it? Reset the diamond and sell the setting? Recycle the setting and sell the diamond? Give it back to my sister in law? After a while, that's what I determined would be the best move. I'd get the diamond removed and deal with the setting on my own, probably by selling it and putting the money towards something greater, like my 401K or a very expensive handbag.

And today, after months and months and months of ignoring this impossibly errandy errand, I went to the Jewelry Building at 333 Washington Street and dealt with it.

"We don't buy used settings back, I'm so sorry," the Jeweler told me. "If you'd like to trade it in, perhaps look at a new piece...?" He said.

"Well, I'm not sure about that," I said. "But I want to return the center stone to my sister-in-law. Can you at least remove it from the setting for me?" I asked. I assumed I'd need to leave the ring there for him to do this, and come back and pick it up later in the week. Things like this take time, don't they?

Actually, they don't. Minutes later, the Jeweler was twisting the prongs that held the diamond in place back and forth with a pair of long, precise pliers. "Platinum," he said. "It's actually worth something. Come back when you're ready and we can discuss what you'd like to do with it."

"Okay," I smiled. "I will."

And thirty seconds later the diamond was plucked from its setting of six years, as matter-of-factly as the day I moved out of my old apartment and on with my life.

And as of today, I am officially disengaged.

I have to say, it's a good feeling.

Shirley Polykoff, the Patron Saint of Blonde Marketing

Does she or doesn't she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure...

Is it true...blondes have more fun?

If I've only one life...let me live it as a blonde!

Do these phrases sound familiar? They should: these ads were penned back in the '50s by a trail-blazing female copywriter named Shirley Polykoff, and changed the American hair care industry forever. Let me put it this way: before Shirley Polykoff penned that first slogan, just 7% of American women dyed their hair, most of whom were actresses and models. When Shirley's stewardship of the Clairol account ended in the 1970s, that number had skyrocketed to 40%, and included women of all walks of life.

Shirley Polykoff's words were so effective, they even inspired me to pursue a book length project on the topic, 50 years later. But who was Shirley Polykoff? I scoured the Internet to find out, and in the process learned: she was a delightful paradox.

She was born in Brooklyn in 1908 into a poor, Ukrainian Jewish family. She went on to became one of the most successful, well-compensated advertising professionals of the 20th century, despite the obstacles presented by industry bias against her gender and her religion.

She was a natural brunette, but always dyed her hair blonde, even when she was still just a teenager, "even in the days when the only women who went blond were chorus girls and hookers."

Shirley's attitude was decidedly unfeminist: "Miss Polykoff was cut from a pre-feminist mold, never forgetting, as she often put it, that she was 'a girl first and an advertising woman second,' (NYT Obituary, 1998.) Polykoff went by a different name at home, as Polly Halperin, always kept the two lives separate, and put her family first before her career. She even insisted that her employers cap her salary at a measly $25,000/year, as she believed it inappropriate for a woman to make more money than her husband (her advertising firm, Foote, Cone & Belding, doubled her salary twice within a few years of her husband's death.) But Shirley's actions spoke louder than her words, and Ms. Polykoff was incredibly ambitious: she lied about her age so as to obtain a job in advertising while still in her early teens, worked her way up in the ad world and held a copy-writing job (as opposed to a secretarial or administrative position) in the '30s when the Depression found many American men out of work, and already had an established advertising career by the '50s, while most of her peers were at home managing the cult of domesticity.

Now, I truly believe that advertising and marketing in this day & age have a terribly deteriorating and damaging impact upon women's self esteem. More specifically, upon my self-esteem. I struggle every day with notions that I am not skinny enough, blonde enough, made-up well enough, dressed well-enough, and on and on. And I am not alone: as Naomi Wolf wrote in The Beauty Myth, "Recent research consistently shows that inside the majority of the West's controlled, attractive, successful working women there is a secret 'underlife' poisoning our freedom; infused with notions of beauty, it is a dark vein of self-hatred, physical obsessions, terror of aging, and dread of lost control." Wolf argues that we may be worse off than our un-liberated grandmothers, that the beauty myths that bind us now may be more stringent than our great grandmother's corsets.

And then there's Shirley Polykoff, a woman who, according to her daughter Alix Nelson Frick, believed "you could acquire all the accouterments of the established affluent class, which included a certain breeding and a certain kind of look. Her idea was that you should be whatever you want to be, including being a blonde." And thanks to her brilliant copy-writing, that's exactly what I've done.

What do you think, readers? Is it a delightful paradox? Or a vicious cycle? Are we liberated by the ads? Or oppressed by them?

Some days I feel like I just can't decide...

sometimes in life, you fall down

A work dinner. I am presenting myself as an author for the first time. I am presenting myself and my book and my project to a room of seasoned professionals for the very first time.

I am nervous.

I excuse myself to use the ladies. 'It's out the door and to the right, then go directly to your left and it's right there.' Sure, no problem. I slip around the other diners & their chairs & the din & chatter, move towards the tall doors to the hallway, step out the door and...

I fall down.

Awesome.

I don't remember stepping up to get into this room, but oops! There's the floor! Guess I missed that crucial step down.

Fortunately, the only people who saw believe me when I tell them "I'm okay, there's nothing to see here, folks, nothing to see." Nobody makes a big fuss. Perhaps they think I am so young and green, I will bounce.

Oh well, I think. It's cool. Sure, I feel embarrassed, but nobody seemed to notice, and if they did, who cares?

Sometimes in life you fall down.

Especially when you're trying new things.

Especially when you're trying new things in heels.

but Kir, you were always a blonde to me

About 2 months ago, the Mathematician and I journeyed west to seek our fortune in the hipster utopia of Portland, Oregon. Actually, he was going there for work, and I decided to go along for the ride. I reconnected with an old, dear friend of mine from high school last spring, Miss Mary, and she had recently relocated to Portland, so I decided to take this opportunity to visit with her in person for the first time in like 5 years. Our very different lives had put us on disparate paths. Would we still get along? Would we have anything to talk about? I had to find out!

I think we were both a little nervous at first. Our slight hesitance kinda reminded me of the very first time we hung out outside of school together 14 years ago. Remember that feeling? Your first friend “date” with someone you just met at school? Tentative at first, but we ended up having so much fun. A few days later I slept over her house & we snuck puffs of a loosely rolled, very weak joint (my first) and watched Dirty Dancing together. We ate Cool Ranch Doritos and raw cookie dough right out of the Pillsbury tube, and laughed and laughed and laughed. I knew it that night: it was love! The kind of special girlfriend bond I’d always missed out on, having only brothers.

Fourteen years later our lives are very different, but within hours of hanging out together in Portland we realized: we still heart each other every bit as much as the first time we ever hung out. And it’s amazing to have someone like Mary back in my life, who knows that old part of me so very, very well.

So I took her comment a little differently when, while talking about my blonde project Mary looked at me and said: “ I always thought you were blonde, Kir!”

“Really? Hmmm…well, you know, I did too. But I’m not, honey. This is blonde, this hair that I have now. And this is bleached.”

“Yes, I know, but I just remember you and I BOTH being blonde when we met.”

“Hmm…Maybe you’re right?” I shrugged. “I mean, hair gets darker with age. Maybe at 14 we were still little blondies.”

Several hours later, while looking through a mess of old photos, I had my answer. By fourteen I had a head of very light brown hair. So did Mary. But in our own minds, we both considered ourselves blonde.

Were we both in blonde denial? Sure. But, as I am learning more and more, blonde is as much a state of mind as it is a hair color. So I guess you could say, in addition to our Dirty Dancing obsession, our cookie dough obsession, and our Pixies obsession, we also shared a blonde thing.

I guess we're both blonde at heart.

Happy Birthday, Miss Mary xoxoxoxoxo

alchemy

Well, it's roughly a month and a half since I became accidentally blonde again, and I am finally ready to talk about it.

Let's zoom back to that fateful May afternoon, just a few days before I was to head off to New York City for Book Expo, a very big publishing industry convention packed with important business meetings for myself and my boss. I wanted to touch up the color and the roots before I left--this always helps me feel confident, cool and collected before a big work thing--so I booked an appointment with Jason about a week before the show.

"What are we doing today, Kitty?" Jason says, as I settle into his favorite chair at the head of the color table. He says this every time I visit.

"You tell me, you're the magician!" I say, as I do every time I visit. "But, if it's possible, do you think we can start the transition back to blonde? I know it will take some time, but I think I'm ready to go at least a little bit lighter."

"You read my mind!" he says. "Back to blonde we go!"

My original transformation to blonde was so simple. We started back in 2005 by subtly highlighting my naturally light brown hair. Each time I returned to the salon to have my roots treated, we'd go a bit lighter, and a bit lighter, and lighter still, until, POOF!--one day I was practically platinum. It was glorious, and revelatory. Sitting in the chair, head swaddled in a towel, waiting for Jason to unwrap my locks and comb them out and style them into a movie-star like coif was like opening a fun, blonde present. SURPRISE! Today you're blonder than you've ever been!

I so loved that feeling. I look forward to chasing it all over again as we transition back to blonde this Spring.

So, Jason gets to work, painting little tiny bits of my hair with goopy bleach and wrapping it up into an impossible number of crinkly foil wrappers. I know the drill, I've done this before. He paints and wraps. We chat about his life and his boyfriend, my life and my boyfriend, and how much more fun we're going to have when I have become famous & he is part of my entourage...or when he becomes famous and I am part of his entourage. This step takes about a half hour, then he steps away to attend to another client while the bleach does it's magic.

My hair cooks and I read Vogue. I make friends with a brunette woman at the color table who wants to know all about the project. I tell her what it has been like to be blonde. Eventually we run out of things to say, and I pick up a recent issue of Glamour.

Periodically the other stylists come by to say hello. Wendy, Megan, Dan: they all know me by now, and they always say hi and ask about the book. "What are you guys doing today?" they ask.

"Embarking on the road back to blonde," I reply, flashing them a big, about to be blonde soon grin. "I'm back! Or will be in a few months. I think we're probably just going a tad lighter today? I don't really know."

"Really???" Wendy says, a faint cloud of concern flitting across her face. "Already??? That was fast."

"Wow, that's...well, that's kind of a big deal," says Dan, looking surprised.

"HUH, okay," says Megan. "Well," and she ends our conversation the way the other two stylists had before her:

"Good luck."

...words you never want to hear from your doctor, dentist, or hair stylist.

Periodically, Jason returns to unwrap a foil, sneak a peek at my hair. It crinkles in my ears as he unwraps, re-wraps. "More time," he says, walking away to see a different client. I read more Glamour.

Ten minutes later, Jason returns, takes a look. "Ready?" I say. "Nope," he shakes his head. This happens two or three more times. I'm getting bored. I am just about to move onto an issue of Real Simple, when one of the assistants beckons me over to the washing station. Finally! The grand unveiling. I am filled with anticipation as I dip my head back into the sink. She makes a great ruckus as she unwraps those millions of tiny foils with quick, deft hands. She washes, rinses, conditions, rinses, deep conditions, waits five minutes, rinses, then wraps my head up into a towel.

Five minutes later I am back in Jason's chair, where he un-swaddles my head to reveal...

A kaleidoscope of colors.

From ends to roots I see:

• Dark brown on the bottom, the same color I was when I walked in today,
• Salmon pink in the middle, the oldest hair, which has been platinum, brown, auburn, almost black, and now en route to blonde again
• A two-inch ring of brassy orange circling my crown, the two inches of virgin hair that grew out over the brunette winter, and has only ever been dyed brown
• An inch of searing, albino white at the roots, the newest virgin hair that has never been dyed, reacting violently platinum to copious amounts of bleach

Wow. Guess I'm going back to blonde--or something like it--today.

What ensues is referred to as a "double process," so another round of Jason mixing chemicals, painting colors on my hair, foiling, waiting, reading Vogue again, getting bored, shooting the breeze with the other stylists, getting bored when they walk away to deal with their clients, and eventually staring into space by myself at the color table, wishing I could be anywhere but here. I have heard the CD go thru this rotation already, and I am sick of Joan Jett and the Hair soundtrack. My scalp is hot, and is starting to itch & burn at the roots. I wonder if I'm going to get one of those mysterious and inexplicable rashes that I occasionally get when my skin encounters harsh things, like soap or cat hair.

Poor Jason. He is swamped with other clients and I can tell the chemistry experiment that is my hair is working his last nerve. He enlists Dan to help, and they work tirelessly to make my now 2-tone hair look normal. By the time I am finally done with the second round of washing, rinsing, conditioning, rinsing, deep conditioning, rinsing and blow drying, I have been here for a whopping six hours.

And my hair is 2-tone. The top has achieved a lovely light, ashy sort of blonde, however the bottom half...well, we never went there with the bleach. It's the same dark auburn hue that it was when I walked in here at 3 p.m. I have a huge, important business trip coming up. And my hair looks like something you'd wear to a punk rock show.

I feel exhausted as I walk out of the salon, completely disoriented, and a little bit helpless. Jason is going to touch me up before my trip next week, but truthfully the last thing I want to do is be anywhere near that color table. I am mulling all of this over as I pass a gaggle of kids from the project down the street, who couldn't be more than 12-years-old.

"Hey, you want to suck on a frosty nipple???" one of them yells out to me. I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. He is eating an ice cream cone, and probably feeling like a big tough guy for degrading a woman more than twice his age in front of all his friends.

Awesome. I've been blonde for exactly ten minutes and I'm already being sexually harassed...by a child.

Am I ready for this? This blondeness? The aggressive, entitled sexual harrassment that comes with it?

No. I certainly am not.

color blind

So, further to my post of last Monday, the current state of affairs with my hair color is dark.

Yep, it's dark alright. As we know from my inital posts about the blonde-to-brunette change, I elicited some great reactions my very first night working in the restaurant as a brunette. Here's a laundry list of favorites that I have not yet shared:

Andy, the chef, said:
"Hey, Kitty! That looks HOT! I like it. But next time, I think you should go RED. Red hair's awesome."
(His girlfriend is a redhead. Not surprisingly.)

Olivia, my friend's adorable baby, who was always standoffish when I was a blonde:
She said nothing, since she's only 18 months old. However, I took grasping for my hands and smiling and laughing at me instead of cowering in fear as a positive reaction.

Uri, the sous chef from Belarus:
Uri also said nothing. He also wouldn't make eye contact with me for the first hour of service, and squared his jaw in a way that was so somber, so Eastern bloc, that I feared I'd sent him spiraling into some sort of deep depression. Only later did he speak to me, to squeak out one little syllable: "Why?"

Tony, the very fabulous Brazillian busser who calls me Barbie:
"AAAACCK, Kitty, what did you DOOOOO??????"
(Thereby supporting my theory that Latin American gentlemen, at least, prefer blondes.)

All of these reactions really made me feel that I'd made a remarkable change to my outward appearance, that my new hair color was something that would not go unnoticed.

Then after my most recent touch up, a peculiar thing started to happen. People who I had seen at least once, perhaps even twice or three times since my initial deblonding, starting saying things like:
"Hey, oh my GOD. Did you dye your hair? I didn't recognize you, it's so different!!!! I like it! I really do!"

"Um, yeah," I'd say, puzzled, "I did dye it, Like two months ago, have I not seen you since then? No, no, wait a minute, I saw you last week. And the week before. Dude, I've seen you like six times since I dyed it. WTF?"

"Oh," they'd say, "well, hmmm... But now it's REALLY, REALLY dark. Before it was just, you know, a little darker."

"You mean when I went from platinum to dark brown? Yeah, that's hardly noticeable."

I can only assume that these people are color blind.

You always remember your first

This is my new project, a journal of my body, my clothing and the reactions they elicit. I want to do this for a few reasons: 1) to enhance my understanding of the limits of my own body, where skin meets space, where the universe ends & I begin; 2) to enhance my understanding of the language of this body, which seems to be sending crazy messages to everybody all of the time; and 3) to get to the bottom, for once & for all, of the sexual harassment experience.

The bottom line is this: when I turned thirteen years old, my body became visible as a billboard. I grew a few inches taller, developed hips and breasts, and all of a sudden, my body was no longer my own. It became a public entity, avidly consumed by the viewing public. Along came judgment and commentary by that public. I have been reeling ever since.

Let me start at the beginning: the first time I recall feeling vulnerable because of my body in the workplace. I remember it vividly because I couldn't believe it was happening to me--I couldn't believe I was being "sexually harassed", this thing that happened to grown women as they worked adult jobs, like Anita Hill.

I was working at my very first job, as a busser on Saturday and Sunday mornings at the Black Forest Cafe in Amherst, NH. My uniform was a white, buttoned-down shirt and khakis. I wore my hair up in a ponytail, and I'm sure I wore some sort of sneakers. I didn't know much about making myself look good then, but I knew what frumpy felt like, and I do recall feeling utterly so each morning as I pulled up to the restaurant in my navy blue 1985 Cutlass Supreme.

It was the end of my shift that day, and I was putting away glassware. I learned early on from my crazy, abusive boss (my first, but definitely not my last) that the only way to earn my stripes would be to work constantly. I had to work as though the minute I stopped working, I might be caught & be fired. Even when nothing was going on, I should work, find a way to have something to do, find a way to make myself look busy and un-fireable. Wiping glassware was the last ditch effort. It came last after filling sugar bowls, marrying ketchups, straightening silver on tables. It was a job I did slowly, so as to drag it out until ti was time to go home. So, I was wiping glassware with a damp cloth, methodically, to remove the spots that inevitably formed as the steamy water from the dishwater dribbled down their sides to dry on their cool, still surfaces.

I was so young then, and a busser, so I had no real experience talking to customers. There was a man at the bar that day, of whom I wasn't aware until I went to put the glasses back in their rightful spot. I remember nothing about him, but for the fact that he was old, about my dad's age, and perhaps a little crazy. As I bent over to place a glass on the middle rack, back turned to the counter guest, and, I suppose, my ass sticking up in the air, a man's voice said "Yeah,that's real nice. Why don't you bend over a little further, sweetheart." I felt the blood rush to my face, quickly dropped to a kneeling-squat closer to the floor, and rushed the remaining several glasses on to their shelves as fast as I could. Then I stood abruptly, head down, face red, and rushed to the kitchen. I could feel his eyes on me, and hear him chuckle softly as I walked away.

I still remember exactly how it felt when the man spoke to me that way, though the details of the day remain fuzzy. I remember it vividly because I reinhabit those feelings on an almost daily basis, each time a man talks to me as though my body is public property. I zoom back to the body of my fourteen year old self: surprised to hear such words spoken; embarrassment seeping from my stomach to the tips of my ears like spilled ink; frozen in the moment with fear, and no notion of what to do next. And I feel so stuck because this man is completely, outrightly demeaning me, but couching his cruelty in the form of a compliment.

Thus stuckness, this confusion, this embarrassment: that is what I want this blog to be about.