By Pennie Azarcon dela Cruz, Executive Editor
Sunday Inquirer Magazine
UP UNTIL a year ago, I hated my hair. Fine and limp, it slumped on my scalp like a furry roadkill, two tweezers' pull away from becoming extinct. Always a cause for despair, the scraggly strands initially tortured Nanay who had fancied herself her daughters' keepers -- at least when it came to their profligate hair. She was our childhood Delilah, the infidel who inveigled us with 50 centavos -- a small fortune that bought a week's worth of halo-halo at that time -- just to have our locks chopped.
Long unruly hair is unsightly, she scolded, a nesting place for parasites. One of these days, she'd warn my third sister who was constantly scratching her particularly thick mop, "those lice would grow so fat they'd sprout wings and carry you off." Actually, it was one prospect we had secretly looked forward to-- a fantastical journey that would lift us out of our bahay-eskwela-simbahan (home-school-church) routine. But it never happened and soon enough, Nanay took another tack. Laying on the guilt for which all mothers are particularly skilled at, she nagged, Doesn’t it bother us that she was being pilloried by other people for being an unfit mother, one who couldn’t even keep her children’s tresses under control?
Well that worked, at least for some time.
So there we were, five snot-nosed siblings sweating and glowering under our Beatles bangs, mutiny on our mind, as Aling Nena, the neighborhood beautician, sharpened her scissors for that unkindest cut of all. Sweeney Todd couldn't have had a better role model.
Like other women of her time, Nanay's barbershop skills derived much inspiration from the upturned mangkok look, the original take for Javier Bardem’s murderous mane. It looked cool on the Fab Four, but the crooked bangs didn't do much for us. We thought we looked hideous enough, but once Aling Nena got started, we were clearly headed for trouble. With a few choice snips, we usually ended up with a very short bob, what the fashionable pards are sporting these days. If the beautician had extra setting lotion (ironically branded "Lovely"), she would unwittingly muddy up the genetic pool by making us look half-Aeta with our newly-minted tight curls and fair skin.
I spent the better part of my childhood enduring two basic hairstyles-- the plastered na-tipus look with my few wispy hair lying prostrate on my skull, or the Little Orphan Annie look, with a halo of kinky curls framing my perpetual scowl.
Occasionally, I’d try to be trendy -- to disastrous results. Of course I knew my limits and never attempted a Farrah Fawcett, but when jeproks was in, I had my hair frizzed ala Carly Simon. It was my best look, a girlfriend told me, but she was smirking so I couldn't believe her. When Princess Di flipped her bangs on her wedding day, I followed suit as I marched down the aisle a few months later. This was the early 80s and big hair was making a comeback. I wanted to be a nun or convert to Islam, if only to keep my head covered. Why, I must have squandered half my life's savings on mousse trying to give body to my comatose crown!
Relief came somewhat in the Nineties with Demi Moore's closely-cropped hair, and later, with the Spike. With gallons of gel, I managed to coax my ultra-short 'do into stiff attention, feeling very hip now that my locks were in rigor mortis -- until another friend half-jokingly asked, "Nagmi-midlife crisis ka ba?" That effectively ended all my resolve to experiment with new hairstyles. As soon as I could, I went back to the curls, never mind that they made me look like my science teacher in high school. "Your poodle-do," my former editor would often josh me.
Sometime more than a year ago, that editor quit and I found myself neck-deep in work. There were pictorials to coordinate, stories to write, edit, assign and follow up. Work that two people used to do now threatened to bury me. Who had time for a haircut? I felt like Medusa and I knew I must have looked like one, too, what with my shaggy hair touching my collar and turning into serpents for all I care.
Except they didn't.
Suddenly, people were stopping me at work and asking, "how much?" pursing their lips towards my head. How much for what? I countered, genuinely puzzled. "For your rebond. You know, what you did to your hair?" I was dumbfounded. While I wasn't looking, my hair had grown past my chin, revealing its true character in the process -- naturally straight and, being soft and limp, graciously manageable. People actually thought I had an expensive salon treatment to get this kind of hair. Wow!
Suddenly, my bad hair days are over. For the first time in my life, my hair is now deemed stylish and fashionable. And to top it all, with shoulder-length stealth, my locks have also managed to hide my sagging jowls. Now I can lie about my age without tearing off my hair in righteous guilt after.
And that's how I've finally managed to wash all that angst out of my hair.
Editor's note: First image is an intentionally dark photo of the author, who is in the dark about her hair's attempt to redeem itself. Second photo shows the frizzy hairstyle that the author and other fashionable jeprox were wearing in the late 70s.
For more tangled tales and other hairy stories, check out the April 20 issue of the Sunday Inquirer Magazine.
UP UNTIL a year ago, I hated my hair. Fine and limp, it slumped on my scalp like a furry roadkill, two tweezers' pull away from becoming extinct. Always a cause for despair, the scraggly strands initially tortured Nanay who had fancied herself her daughters' keepers -- at least when it came to their profligate hair. She was our childhood Delilah, the infidel who inveigled us with 50 centavos -- a small fortune that bought a week's worth of halo-halo at that time -- just to have our locks chopped.
Long unruly hair is unsightly, she scolded, a nesting place for parasites. One of these days, she'd warn my third sister who was constantly scratching her particularly thick mop, "those lice would grow so fat they'd sprout wings and carry you off." Actually, it was one prospect we had secretly looked forward to-- a fantastical journey that would lift us out of our bahay-eskwela-simbahan (home-school-church) routine. But it never happened and soon enough, Nanay took another tack. Laying on the guilt for which all mothers are particularly skilled at, she nagged, Doesn’t it bother us that she was being pilloried by other people for being an unfit mother, one who couldn’t even keep her children’s tresses under control?
Well that worked, at least for some time.
So there we were, five snot-nosed siblings sweating and glowering under our Beatles bangs, mutiny on our mind, as Aling Nena, the neighborhood beautician, sharpened her scissors for that unkindest cut of all. Sweeney Todd couldn't have had a better role model.
Like other women of her time, Nanay's barbershop skills derived much inspiration from the upturned mangkok look, the original take for Javier Bardem’s murderous mane. It looked cool on the Fab Four, but the crooked bangs didn't do much for us. We thought we looked hideous enough, but once Aling Nena got started, we were clearly headed for trouble. With a few choice snips, we usually ended up with a very short bob, what the fashionable pards are sporting these days. If the beautician had extra setting lotion (ironically branded "Lovely"), she would unwittingly muddy up the genetic pool by making us look half-Aeta with our newly-minted tight curls and fair skin.
I spent the better part of my childhood enduring two basic hairstyles-- the plastered na-tipus look with my few wispy hair lying prostrate on my skull, or the Little Orphan Annie look, with a halo of kinky curls framing my perpetual scowl.
Occasionally, I’d try to be trendy -- to disastrous results. Of course I knew my limits and never attempted a Farrah Fawcett, but when jeproks was in, I had my hair frizzed ala Carly Simon. It was my best look, a girlfriend told me, but she was smirking so I couldn't believe her. When Princess Di flipped her bangs on her wedding day, I followed suit as I marched down the aisle a few months later. This was the early 80s and big hair was making a comeback. I wanted to be a nun or convert to Islam, if only to keep my head covered. Why, I must have squandered half my life's savings on mousse trying to give body to my comatose crown!
Relief came somewhat in the Nineties with Demi Moore's closely-cropped hair, and later, with the Spike. With gallons of gel, I managed to coax my ultra-short 'do into stiff attention, feeling very hip now that my locks were in rigor mortis -- until another friend half-jokingly asked, "Nagmi-midlife crisis ka ba?" That effectively ended all my resolve to experiment with new hairstyles. As soon as I could, I went back to the curls, never mind that they made me look like my science teacher in high school. "Your poodle-do," my former editor would often josh me.
Sometime more than a year ago, that editor quit and I found myself neck-deep in work. There were pictorials to coordinate, stories to write, edit, assign and follow up. Work that two people used to do now threatened to bury me. Who had time for a haircut? I felt like Medusa and I knew I must have looked like one, too, what with my shaggy hair touching my collar and turning into serpents for all I care.
Except they didn't.
Suddenly, people were stopping me at work and asking, "how much?" pursing their lips towards my head. How much for what? I countered, genuinely puzzled. "For your rebond. You know, what you did to your hair?" I was dumbfounded. While I wasn't looking, my hair had grown past my chin, revealing its true character in the process -- naturally straight and, being soft and limp, graciously manageable. People actually thought I had an expensive salon treatment to get this kind of hair. Wow!
Suddenly, my bad hair days are over. For the first time in my life, my hair is now deemed stylish and fashionable. And to top it all, with shoulder-length stealth, my locks have also managed to hide my sagging jowls. Now I can lie about my age without tearing off my hair in righteous guilt after.
And that's how I've finally managed to wash all that angst out of my hair.
Editor's note: First image is an intentionally dark photo of the author, who is in the dark about her hair's attempt to redeem itself. Second photo shows the frizzy hairstyle that the author and other fashionable jeprox were wearing in the late 70s.
For more tangled tales and other hairy stories, check out the April 20 issue of the Sunday Inquirer Magazine.
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