Maybe I was so caught up in the ritual of the bangs, the daily six-step routine, that I lacked any real perspective.
The bangs sprang up toward the end of the weird-hair heyday of the late ’80s/early ’90s, but even then they were an anachronism. In their five-year existence, the bangs did not belong to the feathered, Farrah Fawcett past or the teased, glam metal present but rather to some overly sculpted, sci-fi future (that is, the kind of future where you can still buy Rave Ultra Hold hairspray for $1 at Rite Aid. Lotta bang for your buck!)
This is the style of bangs I wore from about sixth to ninth grade. Anachronistic as the style was, it’s hard to say where I came up with it. I’ve never really been into teasing—hair or people—and I, like many of my peers, thought that that ’95 Jennifer Aniston haircut (“The Rachel”) was pretty damn enviable. But instead, I “made friends” with a whole different look. It’s harder, still, to know whether I wore the bangs or the bangs wore me. Hindsight suggests the latter. All I know is I’ve never been a big fan of my hair or my forehead, so for about five years, I coped with the reality of both by inventing a futuristic bangs-styling method, which I now refer to as THE COIL.
I think it’s worthwhile to pause in this review in order to explain how to achieve THE COIL.*
Step 1: Using comb, separate bangs from rest of hair.
Step 2: Comb the hell out of ’em.
Step 3: Spray bangs with generous blast of Rave Ultra Hold hairspray.
Step 4: Using super hot curling iron, roll bangs into tight coil at top of forehead. Hold for 3–5 seconds.
Step 5: Very gently release bangs from curling iron, being careful to preserve the integrity of THE COIL. Note: Depending on the barrel of your curling iron, THE COIL should be just slightly smaller than a toilet paper tube or about the size of a crispy Italian breadstick.
Step 6: And speaking of crispy, add lots more Rave Ultra Hold to bangs. You never know how a sudden gust of wind could compromise THE COIL! With this style of bangs—as with cereal, breadsticks, and bacon—crispiness is key.
*All of this should take about 5 minutes, but if you’re running late for middle/high school, as I often was, you only have about 2.4. The result is a hurried, less-than-satisfactory coil: crispy as all get-out but also kinda overwrought and wilting.
I had sisters, teen magazines. My childhood home had mirrors. That’s why, for the life of me, I can’t figure out how I lasted five years in THE COIL’s death grip. Why was there no intervention? Why didn’t someone flip to a page of YM and casually suggest another, less crispy style? Why didn’t I realize that, even at $1 a pop, those bottles of sticky Rave hairspray were being emptied a tad too quickly? Maybe I was so caught up in the ritual of the bangs, the daily six-step routine, that I lacked any real perspective. This was evident when I was cast as a townsperson in the high school musical, Oklahoma! For the show, I wore a lace-trimmed country dress, pulled my hair back in an uncontroversial updo, but, bangs-wise, still defaulted to THE COIL. Oklahoma!, you may recall, takes place in the Oklahoma Territory in the early 20th century. So my bangs were at their most anachronistic here, staying perfectly in place even during energetic dance numbers to “The Farmer and the Cowman” and “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top.”
I don’t think many people love looking at photos of themselves during the early teen years, but looking at photos of THE COIL induces a particularly potent combination of anxiety, horror, and regret (and OK, a little amusement). The thing is, I remember a secret about THE COIL that has stayed with me throughout my bangs’ existence, and I feel I must share it in this review. It’s a secret that I assume plagues anyone, at some point of another, who needs to express utter certainty about something—brides at the altar, preachers at the pulpit, witnesses on the stand. The secret is: “I’m not sure.”
I wasn’t sure! Styling our hair—or any kind of personal grooming, for that matter—can be so personal and improvisational and intense. It doesn’t matter whether the process is high-, mid-, or low-maintenance; it’s all trying to communicate a message. Every day we emerge from bathrooms and bedrooms, trying to look the way we’d like the world to see us (unless we’re running super late, at which point the world’s gonna have to deal with whatevs). When it came to THE COIL, I never felt utter certainty. I was never convinced it was the way I wanted the world to see my bangs, and furthermore, I had a sneaky suspicion the style was sort of overly sculpted and sci-fi. My freshman year crush, a senior, didn’t exactly rave about it (“Why do you do your hair like that?”), and occasionally people would try to mess up THE COIL (though luckily the hairspray shield kept it intact). I was super sensitive about all this, and sometimes later on, while riding the bus or driving my Dodge Omni, I’d cry—not for love of my hair-styling methods or from sheer humiliation but rather from the stinging uncertainty that accompanied this long-lived routine. I had worn THE COIL religiously, every single day for years, and I just wasn’t sure.
I can’t remember when I uncoiled, though I think it was toward the end of my freshman year. The bangs weren’t the last of my hair-styling experiments, but they were certainly the most space-age. I still don’t want to see photos of the Italian breadstick that rested on my forehead for those formative years, but if I could go back in time, I would want to find the old me crying on the bus and provide a little encouragement re: boys and bangs. Probably I’d show the old me some subtler bangs-styling alternatives, then take me out for a Slurpee.
Laura Pearson lives in Chicago where she writes about arts and culture for publications such as TimeOut Chicago, Venus Zine, Mule, Proximity, and GhettoBlaster, and invents new ways of throwing the Frisbee.
