Bad Hair Day

A bad hair day is one of those days when nothing seems to be going right.

In July 1988 the Press Democrat, a Santa Rosa, California newspaper printed:
" Even those who emerge from the sea to casually braid their shiny wet vines into a thick coil with a hibiscus on the end also have bad-hair days."

A bad hair day has become an adapted saying in modern language. It is thought that the first famous person to publicly utter the words 'I'm having a bad hair day' was the First Lady Hillary Clinton. It's not known whether she meant her hair hadn't turned out well, or she'd just heard something shocking concerning a young intern called Monica and a close encounter with a cigar.

The earliest verified use of the phrase bad hair day in print, was a 1988 column in the Houston Chronicle by Susan Swartz. Significantly, Swartz herself doesn't claim to have invented the term bad hair day herself, but suspects she may have picked it up from nearby teen-aged girls.

In the 1992 film Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there was a conversation between Buffy (Kristy Swanson) and a one-armed vampire named Amilyn (Paul Reubens):

I'm fine but you're obviously having a bad hair day.

Since it came into common usage, the bad hair day utterance is either a euphemism for a period of time - possibly since alighting from bed - when nothing has gone right, in fact everything that could go wrong is going wrong. Unfortunately there's no cure for this ailment, other than going back to bed, and hoping for a better day tomorrow.

The other bad hair day - that's when you get up, look in the mirror - and scream. So you dash to the shower, shampoo and condition your hair, dry it, brush it, and - stand in front of the mirror, pray, and open your eyes. With luck you've cured the nightmare, but if you haven't, stick your head back in the shower and rinse, rinse, rinse. Sometimes that's all a bad hair day really is, you've rushed so much you haven't rinsed your hair properly. If that doesn't work, you could always follow Madonna and wear a flat cap.

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One Really Bad Hair Day:

A 19-year-old drug smuggler, arriving in the US from Colombia, attempted to conceal £50,000's-worth of heroin under a toupee. To make sure none fell out, he used super glue to attach the 40 packets to his head.

Because he used super glue, they took him to a medical facility to have it removed. Even at that, it pulled out the hair wherever they removed a package, so he ended up looking like a spotted cat.
- Officer Jennifer Conners

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Absolutism killed Charles the First;
Absolution denied, he was cursed
With a permanent bob
By the barbarous mob.
A bad hair day? The absolute worst.

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Really bad hair day:

A mother bought her daughter a Ken doll that had real hair. One day the mother noticed that the hair had lice in it. She was disguted and decided to boil the doll in a pan. As the lice died she carefully skimmed them out of the water with a ladel.

Unfortunately, the stench of the dead lice caused her to sneeze and she blew the dead lice all over the stove.

Moral: "The best ladeled pans of lice and Ken oft turn to spray."

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Bad hair day can crush a woman's self esteem:

Misty Harris, CanWest News Service
Published: Wednesday, April 12, 2006

The most educated and empowered generation of women in history can still be rendered vulnerable by a bad hair day, according to a study released today.

The 10-country survey revealed that two-thirds of females aged 15 to 64 will disengage from normal activity if they feel badly about their looks.

One in five Canadian women said low self-esteem would prevent them from giving their opinion on an issue -- slightly higher than the global average of 17 per cent -- and roughly one in 10 would skip a doctor's appointment because of it.

Worldwide, one in four women has passed on a social event, one in five has shunned physical activity, and others have avoided joining a club (18 per cent), going to a job interview (16 per cent), or hitting the beach, spa or swimming pool (29 per cent) because they experienced discomfort with their looks.

"The extent to which girls and women are changing their lives to accommodate how they feel about themselves is really alarming," says Sharon MacLeod, spokesperson for the Dove Self-Esteem Fund, which commissioned the survey.

The bleakest statistics are from Japan, where 94 per cent of women have disengaged from normal activity because of how they look: nearly half (49 per cent) have avoided giving an opinion, 51 per cent have avoided a doctor's visit, and 61 per cent have avoided, or would avoid, a job interview.

On the positive side, the survey also revealed mothers wield the power to prevent such behaviours early in life.

Of the 3,300 women surveyed, 61 per cent said their moms had positively shaped their ideas about beauty. Further, when mothers were named as the primary influence on such ideas, other family members were likely to play a greater role and the media's authority was significantly reduced.

More than any other nationality surveyed, Canadian women said they want to change their body weight (55 per cent, versus the global average of 42 per cent). Twenty-six per cent of Canadian women want to alter their skin complexion (versus the global average of 15 per cent), and 22 per cent want to change the way their face looks in general (versus the global average of 13 per cent).

Seventeen per cent of Canadian girls aged 15 to 17 admitted to having experienced disordered eating, such as binging and purging or refusing to eat; for those aged 18 to 64, the number shrank to nine per cent.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2006

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HAVE A GOOD HAIR DAY!