I remember the feel of my grandmother’s gnarled hand tousling the top of my head the morning after I came from a haircut supervised by my mother, her smile and exclamation, “Irma La Douce!” Lola was referring to a Shirley MacLaine character in a movie showing in downtown Manila in the early 1960s. It was meant “For Adults Only,” this story of a prostitute, played by Ms. MacLaine, protected by a policeman.
Mine was a short, blunt cut with bangs. I envied classmates whose mothers allowed them to grow their hair way past their shoulders until they could wear pigtails, ponytails, twin braids, ribbons or barrettes. I wore a practical, low-maintenance cut that didn’t leave much space for hair accessories. I think what I was envious about was the time their mothers spent brushing and styling their hair while busy, office-going Mom left me to the yaya.
A few years later, 1965 to be exact, my 10-year-old self would find comfort in the image of Julie Andrews as Maria in The Sound of Music. Now there was the classic pixie cut that followed the shape of her head, leaving tendrils of hair at the nape of her neck. And yes, this haircut followed her throughout all her other films. I don’t recall her ever playing a long-haired role. Now a nonagenarian, Dame Julie still wears that same manageable style everywhere.
Another formative film in my youth-childhood is the original Sabrina with Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and William Holden. In her post-Paris return to Long Island, Audrey sports a short, sophisticated haircut, again something I personally preferred.
The Irma La Douce cut or Julie Andrews’ cropped hair would be the classics I would refer to as my two daughters entered childhood. Others called it the bowl cut to mean the shape of an upturned bowl placed on the head and shaping the hair according to its roundness, including the even bangs.
I never heard a complaint from my girls, except now that they’re in mid-adulthood, Kimi wears her hair down to her neck and Ida below her shoulders. Or I blame it on the high cost of hair styling in the United States where they live. As for the granddaughters, they’re long-haired lasses.
In college I saw short videos and pictures of the champion figure skater Dorothy Hamill who sported what was called the wedge haircut. Oh, how she could spin and do double jumps gracefully, and yet her disciplined hair would still bounce back in place. I wanted that, too. Since I had no visual reference to show her, my hairdresser just snipped away until I looked in the mirror and saw Joan of Arc instead before she was set on fire. Or Vanessa Redgrave as Guenevere before she was exiled to a nunnery in the movie Camelot.
Naku! All my references are showbiz, but I’ve got to say that all these women are classics, worth emulating and following through the decades. Others who rocked the pixie are Emma Stone, Halle Berry, Mia Farrow, Twiggy and Liza Minnelli.
At certain points in my life, I would take out my frustration on anyone or anything on my hair—a radical cut, even the Gupit Dos or barber’s cut, offered relief from whatever emotional turmoil I was going through. In fact, a barber now does my hair, although during this recent grooming visit, I think he overdid it. And I ended up looking more like the 7-Up mascot Fido Dido than anything remotely feminine. My head is spiky, especially when I wake up in the morning. So much so that when I returned to Baguio, my husband Rolly Fernandez, the original Fido Dido, greeted me, “Hi, Pards!”
I asked my friend Carole Tysmans, photographer Wig’s wife and muse, about the long straight hair she has maintained all these years with a refreshing or cool undercut beneath the volume of hair (see picture).
She explained how this came to be her style-marker: “I was a budding teenager, starting to get conscious of my personal appearance, and I was so envious of other girls with long straight hair. I had healthy hair strands, so voluminous that they couldn’t fall straight on my shoulders! I would cry when my mom would take me for a trim at her beauty parlor in Dick & Lucy, then Baguio’s best! Mom’s manggugupit took mercy on me. One day, said she could fix my hair for as long as we kept it a secret from my mom. One fine day, I walked out of the parlor with a shave from behind! It worked, but it was difficult to maintain then. It took a while until I got a thumbs up from my mom. With the advent of hair straightening products and many more kaekekan, here I am sporting the undercut. Now that I’m aging and my hair is thinning, I’m oppositely looking for volume naman!”
Another thing I decided early on is not to color or dye my hair, no matter how my sister Suzy insists that henna is organic and harmless. Call me superstitious, but I have this notion that the chemicals applied on their hair may seep through one’s skin, eyes or scalp. It was enough that every other day I washed and lathered my hair, such as it with just a dot of shampoo.
I am happy with my barber’s clippers, electric razor, scissors and the dusting of baby powder around my neck after a grooming appointment.
