BEAUTY SHOP TALK

by

Vicki Charmaine Bunch

I have to get hypnotherapy, thanks to the boys who hazed tenth graders at Lamar High School.

Every time a hazing happens--with that cult mentality, that "anything goes" attitude--it plops me right in the middle of my own initiation at the hands of senior cosmetologists at Ajax Beauty College.

Hairdressers don't do that sort of thing, you're thinking. They devote themselves to beautification.

Little does the world know of the degradation suffered by my peers and me. Little do you realize that cosmetic training makes beauty operators capable of things high school boys can't even imagine.

The exact details of the ordeal are too offensive for regular people. Only specially trained doctors can handle it. Which is why I get hypnotized.

The weak of heart should read no further. Even my husband Sonny doesn't know the full story.

Suffice it to say that spoolies, bobby pins, and Dippity-Do were used, along with the crude electrical implements of that time (the bonnet dryer being one).

Clad only in smocks and frosting hoods, we were forced to run a gauntlet between jeering cosmetologists who whacked us with brushes and wet towels.

Shocked?

You may ask yourself, "What in the world is the purpose of hazing?"

Dr. Fenias P. Dexter has written a book on the subject entitled Cults, Ritual Abuse, and Hazing. Finally I understand what was done to me twenty years ago.

This is what hazing did:

It gave us the fun of being liked by others.

It made us dead to our former selves as we became members of a special sect.

It caused us to resign ourselves to the harsh discipline of our superiors.

In a word, it broke us.

We were no longer Betty Smith or Betty Jones. We were Ajax Beauty College robots.

We were given new names. (Mine was Spit Curl.) My friends were French Twist, Pixie, and Duck Tail.

We spent months in lock-step with the Ajax brethren, like lifeless automatons, mindlessly rolling hair day in and day out.

At last my real-life sister, my blood relation Kathy, rescued me against my will and, in a primitive attempt at deprogramming, freed me from my cult-mind. (The methods she employed were worse than those I'd suffered from beauticians.)

If she hadn't liberated me, it's no telling where I'd have ended up.

I get hypnotized about once a year, usually in the fall, and normally because of fraternity incidents at the University of Texas or TCU. It's a sad fact of life.

I can feel it coming on. I start doing odd things. Throwing up on my shoes. Passing out on the sidewalk. Falling off the porch.

Sound familiar? Shake off the chains that bind you, brothers and sisters. Trust me, it's not worth it.

After I was hazed, I believed my relationship with the students at Ajax Beauty College was stronger than any bond on earth.

I was even brainwashed into believing my own grandmother was a stupid idiot because she tried to talk me into dropping out.

Years later I never see Ajax alum--people who once seemed so important. All we do is send Christmas cards.

But the secret tattoo will never fade.

Hazing can change your life.