Being beautiful is way too much work

Back in my day, the olden days, we had bobby pins, curlers, and finally the curling iron to make our locks wavy. As a youngster my mother would wash my hair, whirl it into a circle strand by strand and bobby pin it. I would sleep on those and in the morning when the pins came out I would have wavy curls. I hated the whole process. When I was old enough to care for my hair myself the curling iron came out. It was easy to use once one got the hang of it by using it over and over again, which I did each night before I went to bed and each morning before school. It was simple. Take a strand of hair between the iron's jaws, wind it up, count to ten, let it out. Instant curl.

When my youngest daughter began to pay attention to her looks and her hair I offered up my old curling iron which has sat in a drawer since moving to Florida. She declined instead wanting a straightener, a device that removed the curls. Eventually that went out of style and she asked this year for Christmas two different appliances by Bed Head that would give her waves, ringlets, spirals, or curls depending on which contraption you used. She received two of them.

This past weekend she went to a dance for her friend's Bat Mitzvah and wanted to put loose waves in her hair. I offered to help her knowing she had these new devices. Out came the one that promised "ringlets". It was a one piece device with four bulbs spaced an inch apart. For the small spirals you were to wind the hair between the bulbs and for the waves you wrapped your hair around the bulbs. There was nothing to hold the hair in place like on a curling iron. I tried winding the first strand, but had trouble holding it on the bulb where it didn't slip down into the spiral grooves between the bulbs. The iron was hot and therefore hard to hold the hair on the bulbs once I managed to finally achieve that. Turns out the contraption came with a black glove, which one wears like Michael Jackson on the hand that holds the hair in place. Huh?

Even during my best curling iron days I wasn't a hair care expert, but using this thing on another person with a glove on one hand I wasn't even close to being a novice. I was worse. A portion of Darcy's hair was spirals, and a portion was curly, and another portion was somewhat wavy, and most of the back was just natural. My fingers on the non gloved hand were red and my wrist hurt from twisting and turning. This thing just didn't make any sense to me.

Thankfully she looked good despite my attempts.