Writing Prompt 22: Vintage Hairdryer
How Can I Control My Life When I Can’t Control My Hair?
What is this strange contraption she holds so close to her head? Is it stuck to her hair? She’s smiling a somewhat fixed grin while swathed in a thin, gauzy fabric. A message from the past. Your writing prompt for this week.
One of the worst things you could do at school was to leave behind a curling pubic hair in the bath.
Always, always swill the water around and wash everything down the plughole or an older girl will come in after you and shout - Ewww! You left all your pubes in the bath! - And then she’ll run out as if you'd left a steaming crap on the edge of the rim. Oh, the shame. Always, always swill the bath out.
Bobs. The girls with long hair often came back after the holidays with their hair cut into a swingy, stylish chin-length bob. They could flick their hair from side to side or rake their hand through to create height and volume. My hair was short. Practical. My hair didn't swing. It hugged my head in its pageboy style cut by a fashionable woman with blue spiked hair.
Why do all dolls have long hair?
My auntie once cut the coat of our Irish Red Setter with a pair of kitchen scissors. She left it in patches on her body and cut away all the long feathery hair on her legs. She looked strange, alien, especially when she pulled her gums back into a grin.
The hair on your legs. What's wrong with hair on your legs? I shave mine. I've tried hair removal creams, wax and an epilator but I always come back to razors.
My school friend shaved my legs while I sat on a window sill in my dorm at school. I was 14. I liked the way my skin felt once the hair was gone, all smooth and soft. My leg hair lay on the sill in a wispy, fine layer. I swept it up with my hand and sprinkled it all in the bin by my bed. My palms were a bit sweaty and some of the hair stuck. I went from hairy legs to hairy palms.
I didn't tell my mum.
Story first posted November 2019 / Photo: Tanya Clarke - Seabreeze campsite, Norfolk 2016
