Where We Came From

The strands of hair were wet, despite all efforts to keep them dry under the tight headache-causing bathing cap of the mid to late fifties.
Looking back at pictures of my mother and friends clowning on the beach, heads down toward the water, butts up in the air, I merely accepted the same fate: ugly bathing caps to keep hair dry and curls in place. Of course, now there were other options: plastic flowers on the baldpates, of various shapes and shades.
It’s hard to pinpoint when the demeaning head gear finally got exposed for the fraudulent claims it made, constricting, headachy; it was supposed to protect, but did it ever?
Did it go the way of the burning bra? At least, that did
keep things in place. And besides, “It won’t say Hanes unless she says it says Hanes”, so women trusted it.
Or how about those horrible girdles? We could hardly breathe, although the eighteen-hour one was a little more tolerable. When a male gym teacher told us his wife never wore one; it was too unhealthy as it weakened the stomach muscles, we were aghast. Little did we know, he was right.
Fast forward through the sixties. As if the steel clamps in our too tight ponytails weren’t enough, the space alien brush curls were intolerable, and we slept on them! Did we really sleep? Fitfully. How about the beauty we were striving for when we went to confirmation classes and other public places looking like space aliens?
A short period of questioning and watching UW students next door caused me to grow my hair with its natural wave and NOT join in on the torture. But then, I tried to conform and lost precious comfort and sleep once again. As an alternative, I even slept on empty hollow Metrecal cans, (the precursor of Slim Fast).
That was another torturous thing I did to my body – starve on liquid diets, chewing bed sheets at night to keep from consuming that fattening solid food until my dad warned me not to do that anymore, for the sake of regularity.
We took laxatives in the form of chocolate (ugh) and gum for that too.
My feminist soul screams out when I consider the indignities we women went through to fit some standard of attractiveness, including feigning brainlessness. If advertisers duped us into all those measures, they must have thought we hadn’t any.