My Hair Won't Do the Bump. Maybe I Should Call Margaret.

I have no idea what this picture is about, but it fits this post so well I had to lead off with it. I did not add "Lid" to this pic. It's destiny, that's all.

When I was a little girl, around 1969, 1970 or so, every Friday my mom would take me to her hairdresser's who had a little shop added to her home just on the outskirts of our town.

Bored out of my mind for a solid hour, I paid intermittent attention to the exchanges between Margaret the hairdresser and my mother and little more attention to Margaret's pretty white dog in her back yard and a few "baby toys" in her shop.

I tried to entertain myself in a room void of anything remotely interesting except the comb and brush sanitizer machine which promised to magically clean those instruments by bathing them in an eerie light on a rotating shelf that reminded me of the rotisseries in the grocery store. Let me remind you that I had never seen a microwave yet.

Part of what Margaret did to my mom each week included a "back-combing" of the hair on the crown of my mom's head, an activity otherwise known as "teasing" or "ratting," two terms my mother did not prefer. She called it "backcombing," but I saw it as the most painful-looking beauty treatment I could imagine. After all, I don't think anyone even thought of waxing anything in 60s. Well, at least good Nazarene women didn't.

I remember Margaret throwing her whole upper body into backcombing while standing on the balls of her feet for extra force. Her upper arms would reverberate with every attack of the narrow toothed comb which had a long pointy end for lifting the teased hair.

The routine: Lift, tease, tease, tease ... gently comb the poof down ... lift, tease, tease, tease ...

Margaret: Paused to talk with comb slanted in the air, head cocked to one side the same angle as the comb.

Mom: Tuft of hair sticking straight up, patiently listening, watching Margaret in the mirror.

Then: Lift, tease, tease, tease ....

All through my teen years, even though Mom went through a couple of hairdressers, she kept the same basic style.

And I was mortified.

Remember the late 60s early 70s? Long, straight hair was in style, the flatter the better.

And here was my mom, poofed to the hilt. I could not understand why women made their hair do something so unnatural. How did that style ever become popular? "Old people" were so ... slow to change, so out of touch with anything current, so "dumb."

I AM "old people" now. I'm pretty sure my kids have those moments concerning me, too, and you know what? I don't care so much. Chalk that up to "old people don't care about anything important." But that's another post.

The point is, I'm old enough now that I have seen styles come and go for years. Biggest case in point: flared jeans versus skinny jeans. I wonder how many times I'll see these styles revolve in my lifetime?

Anyway, for a couple of years now, girls have been bringing back the teased crown look. I was surprised when I first saw it, wondered if they knew it was a "retro" look or thought someone at Style World Headquarters recently made it up.

Seriously? "Bumped" hair? What was next ... teenagers wearing girdles again?

Fast forward a few months to this week, and I confess that I have made my first-ever serious attempt at The Bump. A couple of my contemporaries wear it well. I'm feeling the retro vibe. I like both Samantha Stevens' AND Duffy's hair bumps.










But not Gladys Kravitz' Cotton Candy Bump. Gladys's bump definitely looks like the handiwork of Margaret.



And not 80s big hair. There is a big difference in big hair.







I bought a doohickey to stick under the hair to make it bump up, but alas, it did not work for me or my lovely daughters. I guess I'll have to stick with Margaret's tried and true technique, upper arms flailing and all.

Whaddya think? Mom's hair and my Go-Go boots, and my current attempt at The Bump. How about you, bloggers. Do you bump?