BEAUTY SHOP TALK

by

Vicki Charmaine Bunch

Life is full of tragedy. One big soap opera.

As a beautician, I feel it my duty to address one of society's most pervasive myths: BLONDES HAVE MORE FUN.

Yeah, it's true if lying on an ice flow, waiting to die, is your idea of fun. Blondes, you know, originated in the northern climes, the place that brought us leiderhosen and angst.

Some big thinker recently noted that people get friendlier the closer you get to the equator, the inverse of which is how those guys act in Idaho. Not your welcome wagon types, those survivalists. It also explains why Ingmar Bergman films are so weird.

Ever wonder why people aren't lining up in droves for a quick getaway to Reykjavik? Volcanoes are melting the glaciers. You'd be depressed too.

The northern regions gave us Dostoevsky, Frederic Nietzsche, and Franz Kafka. The Caribbean gave us "Don't Worry, Be Happy."

Give me a plain Jane brunette any day. When a natural blonde comes in for a spiral perm, I feel like calling Jack Kevorkian, trapped listening for two solid hours to a litany of reasons why life sucks.

Recall the cheerful ditty, Chopin's Prelude, Op. 28, No. 20, commonly known as "that funeral song." The song you hum all day long if you're blond. Contrast it with "Zippitty-doo-dah," which was probably written by a brunette in Southern California.

I should know about blondes and music. When I was an infant, "Melancholy Baby" was my theme song.

As the matriarch of a clan renown for blond-headedness, I can attest that our main expense, outside of peroxide, is self-help manuals and aroma therapy.

In Big, Bad and Blond, Brunhilda Schmidt details the tragic life of her father, wrestling superstar, Fat Boy Otto Kraut. "They made him be a bad guy," the author laments. "A man so tender he cried from puppies being cute, and the fans booed him. It broke his heart."

As we enter the twilight of the year, as we succumb to seasonal affective disorder (S.A.D.), as our so-called friends desert us like rats from a sinking ship, let us book cheap flights to Cozumel.

Alas, we are doomed even before the first endorphins hit our shriveled brains. Lacking the melanin that would allow us to frolic in the sun--and neglecting to reapply sun screen after a rigorous game of sand volleyball--we are forced to stay inside our hotel room for the next three days, slathered in Noxema, drinking margaritas and reading Crime and Punishment.

We haven't got that "joy, joy, joy, joy down in our heart" because, genetically speaking, we can only stomach so much happiness. Then we explode.

That's why the blond gene's recessive. Survival of the fittest.

Being a fair skinned blond has a few meager crumbs of benefit. Blending in with the snow. The pouty or sullen look--so en vogue!--comes naturally. The invisible moustache. Dogs like us.

The best of both worlds would be, of course, available to a dark haired person who bleached his hair in order to reap all the benefits listed above. Who would know? Outside of the telltale smile or irrepressible laugh, he could pass for a natural blonde. He could rub his eyes with jalapeno juice to make them water, so it would seem like he was crying like a real blonde.

Crying all the time, like Bob Dole, who was not a blonde but acted like one early in the campaign. Stoic and crying at the same time. Humming that funeral song. Griping, and crying, and humming like a true Norseman. Like a helmeted Viking guy in an opera.