How to make your 1980's hair 2015 bendy

Not to brag or anything, but in the 1980s I had perfect hair.

My hair is brown and wavy/curly and thick, and it just wants to grow OUT rather than down, so in its natural state it is like a messy, bouffy oval that reaches its widest point a few centimetres out from each ear, and sits just below shoulder-length.

As a child in the 70s, I wished I could replace my Shirley Temple curls with long straight hair and a fringe, but in the 80s my hair was excellent. I cut it short a couple of times, but mostly I wore it thick and shoulder-length, brushed to make it as soft and fuzzy as possible (like the novels I remember from that time that described the heroine's hair as like a 'soft cloud around her head' - that was a good thing. No anxiety over frizzy hair back then).

The hair goal of all teenage girls back then was this:

Rachel Hunter, 1985

The epitome of female beauty to me was Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone. Who I loved because she had hair just like mine. (And also my sunburned red nose, but that's where the similarity ended).

Alas, by the late nineties the tide had turned against thick curly hair. Even Julia Roberts and Cindy Crawford started straightening their hair.

My hair has always been difficult to straighten. Even when a hairdresser straightens it, it will start to kink by the time I get home, and by the next morning it's back to its messy, wavy self.

I came late to hair-straightening and never fully committed. Unless I wanted to stand in front of the bathroom mirror for an hour and a half with aching forearms, my hair sizzling and steaming under the irons in small sections at a time, and repeat this process every single morning, I was never going to achieve straight hair. I came to a compromise of running the straightening iron through sections around the front and the top and leaving the rest as is, which worked well enough.

But once I had kids and discovered the preciousness and rarity of free time, I lost all interest in spending even twenty minutes of it straightening my hair. It was the mid-2000s and my hair was definitely not correct.

That was a difficult decade for me, obviously.


Now, in my mid-forties in the mid-2010s, I am back to (mostly) loving my hair.  The aspirational hair texture these days is "bendy".  Bendy hair is shoulder-length or longer, often brown, and is supposed to look like soft, natural kink as if your hair does this naturally (but of course it doesn't)

You are supposed to secretly spend lots of time and dollars on conditioner and bendy rollers and curling irons to create this look, but here is how you can achieve it with next to no effort if you have my hair:

How to get 2015 bendy hair when your hair is from 1985:

1. Get regular haircuts (8 weeks max) so your hairdresser will at least somewhat remember what s/he did last time. This is important for curly-haired people as our hair quickly obliterates haircut shapes.
2. Colour your hair regularly to cover grey, obvs, but with the pleasant side effect that your wiry frizzy hair is rendered softer and glossier.
3. Wash your hair every two to three days. 
4. If you want massive, curly sticky-up hair, by all means wash it the night before work. But for better results, wash it in the morning and follow the rest of the steps below.

   

   Step 6

5. Shampoo and condition in the shower as normal. 
6. Blow-dry your hair until almost dry. It should look like you're a member of an 80s stadium rock band at this point.
7. Brush your hair out to remove tangles and curls.
8. Tie your hair behind your head into a pony-tail-bun thingy. A pony-tail-bun thingy is when you pull your hair through the first and second loop of a hair elastic as if you are going to do a pony tail, but then don't pull the hair all the way through on the last loop so that it looks a bit like a bun.
9. Spray your hair with just a bit of hairspray (not too much or you'll have to wash your hair every day).
10. Leave house for work or wherever.
11. As you walk into work/reach your destination, reach back and pull out the hair tie, and casually run your hands through your smooth, bendy hair.
12. The next day, brush your hair when you get up and repeat steps 8-12.
13. Enjoy your ongoing success!

Selfie. I somewhat resemble Rose Byrne

Threes

Time for something a little lighter. I quite liked this latest questionnaire meme on Sunday Stealing, which I came across on Princess Pandora.  Clean, short and simple.


1. Three things that scare me:

• poverty
• extremism: the ultra conservative right and the radical left
• fire

2. Three people who make me laugh:

• Phil Dunphy (Modern Family)
• Rebel Wilson
• John Stewart

3. Three things I love:

• solitude 
• dogs
• pens

4. Three things I hate:

• extremism
• boasting (including Humblebrags) on Facebook and Instagram
• loud noises

5. Three things I don't understand:

• How perfectly nice, decent people can be so hardcore unsympathetic to those less fortunate than themselves (eg the Americans' deep antipathy to universal health care; many people's attitudes towards asylum seekers; how people with good jobs and earning good money don't understand they are also lucky)
• men's rights activists 
• how The Greens would run a viable economy

6. Three things on my desk:

• towering pile of papers, DVDs, kids' drawings and notebooks
• pack of my daughter's Hubba Bubba
• a two-pole puncher that hasn't been used in years

7. Three things I'm doing right now:

• blogging 
• laundry
• re-watching Final Destination 2 on DVD

8. Three things I want to do before I die:

• write a book
• live for a year in Y's Greek village



iPad art by my daughter aged six

• get fit 

9. Three things I can do:

• data mining and analysis
• learn a language fast
• talk in rhyming couplets

10. Three things I can't do:

• sing
• mix colours into ready-to-roll icing
• watch cricket

11. Three things you should listen to:

• birdsong in the morning when everything else is quiet
• your favourite music, regularly
• opposing points of view, at least sometimes

12 Three things you should never listen to:

• talk-back radio
• advertising aimed to make you feel inadequate 
• anyone who claims to cure cancer with food 

13. Three things I'd like to learn:

• how to write a novel
• how to stay calm and relaxed
• ballroom dancing

14. Three favourite foods:

• chocolate
• spanokopita: Greek spinach and cheese pie
• steak

15. Three beverages I drink regularly

• coffee
• Coke Zero
• water

16. Three shows I watched as a kid:

• Bewitched
• The Flintstones
• Get Smart

Plainly wrong scientific theories

You know that thing where really really smart people can be clueless about something really really obvious to everyone else? Sure you do. Well, sometimes, really really smart people also go so far into the realm of theory that they come up with ideas that make a lot of sense to them, and can be backed up with all sorts of theoretical equations and logic, and which as a layperson, you try and understand and accept, but in the end you can't help but think, "Nah, I don't reckon."

Here are some examples of theories which I have decided, after long thought and using no science whatsoever, are completely wrong.

1. The Multiverse

The multiverse is a very cool, intriguing idea that everyone loves but it just doesn't stand up. The idea is that there are an infinite number of universes, with an infinite number of possibilities. Which immediately raises the stock response, that an infinite number of universes and possibilities must include one where the multiverse doesn't exist.  Plus, like, doesn't "the universe" mean "everything"? So if there are multiple universes aren't they all just part of "the universe"?

One of the theories around the multiverse is that the universe splits every time two or more possibilities exist. In simple (and probably wrong) terms, one example could be every time you make a decision. So if you turned down a job, or decided not to move to another country, then another universe exists where you accepted that job or moved to that country. Or another universe exists where JFK wasn't assassinated, Hitler drowned as a toddler, or the US didn't invade Iraq. You can see the immediate appeal of such a theory, and I don't think immensely clever theoretical physicists are any more immune to "what if" fantasies than the rest of us.

The problem with this idea is that it gets ridiculous pretty fast. More than one possibility exists all the time. So if I have cereal instead of toast this morning, or my cat jumps right instead of left, the universe splits and another me and another cat, pursue their different lives. And along with us, we take all our family members and furniture and casual acquaintances with us. But why? To what end? In the end this theory just doesn't make any sense.

In my favourite bit from Futurama (episode: I Dated A Robot), Fry travels to the edge of the universe and sees alternate versions of himself and his friends looking back at them.

Fry: Far out! So there really is an infinate number of universes?

Professor Farnsworth: No, just the two.

2. The Theory of Everything

Scientists have been searching for a unifying theory that will explain the universe and reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics, many convinced that such a single, unifying explanation of all things must exist. And what has been the best suggestion to date? String theory. The universe is made up of tiny vibrating strings and mini-universes. (I might have that a bit wrong).

I think this is a limitation of our brains - we love "truth in beauty", we love balance and harmony and we don't like loose ends. Is that a sign that the universe is the same? Or just a side effect of our wiring which has served us well in our evolutionary history?

Who says all the workings of the universe have to be unified? It's a natural assumption, and one I guess we all secretly believe (me as well). But actually it seems not to be the case. Why should it be the case? No one can really come up with a reason, other than appealing to logic and "elegance" or "beauty" which may really be things that our logical, orderly minds require more than actual physical laws.

I actually think that searching for a unifying theory of everything is the equivalent of believing in a God.

3. Quantum behaviour

OK, I might, just might, be wrong about this one. But I (like some scientists) have decided that the weird effects that are seen at the quantum level are more about a failure of our brains to perceive what's happening, than reality. Part of the reason I think this is because throughout history (and throughout my own education and growing up), every time an idea or phenomenon initially seems weird and awesomely magical and unknowable, it turns out to be actually very explainable and to make sense in a much more prosaic way than we imagined.  So I think quantum stuff will too. One day.

4. The idea that humans have unique cognition

Humans are - perhaps - different from other animals, but anyone who has or works with animals knows the differences are over-stated. Sure, laypeople anthropomorphise their pets' behaviour, and yes, humans have complex language and can conceptualise complex ideas like multi-verses. But do we really know that other animals don't do this as well, in their own way?  No we do not.

5. Climate Change

Ha ha, just kidding. Climate change is real, kids.

Crickets

When I was a kid crickets used to stop chirping if you stomped your foot nearby. I know this because I remember it vividly, and as we all know, personal memory is 100% reliable!

But these days, when I walk past a chirping cricket hidden somewhere near my feet, I can stomp and even jump as hard as I want, and the cricket keeps on chirping.

At first I thought crickets might have evolved to tolerate humans stomping  having 'learned' that stomping nearby is not going to harm them. I suppose there have been enough cricket generations in the last 35 years to achieve mutation - or something?

But then I realised that doesn't make sense. First, obviously, because I am not a biologist and have no idea what I am saying. Second, because I don't think this hypothesis provides environmental pressure on crickets to not be scared of stomping? (What's to gain by continuing to chirp? More mates impressed by your fearlessness? What advantage is lost by halting the chirping for a few seconds?) 

But mainly, because surely kids have been stomping on the ground around crickets for amusement for thousands of years. So if crickets were going to evolve an insouciance for stomping feet, wouldn't they have done it long before now?

So have Melbourne crickets been overrun with a different sub species that tolerates foot stomping? Do people these days just not know how to stomp like the old days? Or is my memory playing tricks on me?

Do crickets fall silent when you walk by where you are, or are they all confident and noisy like ours?

Great Innovations

There are great inventions that changed the world: things like paper, refrigeration, the internal combustion engine, the internet - even the shipping container.  There's great stuff that has saved lives and improved the world, like vaccines, seat belts, genetically modified food and the internet.

But what about the countless small innovations that have made daily life better? The things that you don't even notice, unless you're old enough to remember a time without them. Every time I use a ziplock bag, spray detangler on my kids' hair or pop open a milk carton, I think of what a marvel these things are, and how happy and proud I hope are the people who invented them. I hope, regardless of any money or kudos their innovations got them, that these people go home every night from their workplaces, content and satisfied, knowing their work has made life a little bit better.


I'm thinking of things like...


Non-Iron clothes. Thanks to permanent pant creases and drip-dry wrinkle-free technology, the only time I iron these days is when my daughter does a Hama bead project.

Of course, along with non-crushable fabrics and everyone's time-poor lives has come an increased tolerance for crushed fabrics, so we do wear clothes like school dresses and cotton shirts that really SHOULD be ironed but aren't. And so does everyone else.


Blu-tack. Blue-tack was around when I was a kid, so it's not recent. But it's still great.

Dauvlt Alexander/Flickr CC

Easy-peel stickers. Young people, you have no idea what things used to be like. Once upon a time, when you bought things from a shop and brought them home, you would spend a frustrating amount of time trying to remove the stickers, especially from things like books and CDs. Frequently, you would end up scraping them off bit by bit with sticky gum getting caught under your fingernails, and then rubbing off the residue with tea-tree oil (or leaving it there forever).







Car registration stickers (finally, as of this year, no longer required here) have been easy-peel for some years, but when I was a kid they required a bucket of soapy water and a razor blade to take off, and were a fun way for your dad to pass the time on a Saturday.







If I were writing this list ten years ago, I might have added sticker postage stamps. But actually I really invented those myself, because back when I used postage stamps and used to have to lick the backs of them, I used to say every time "Ugh! Why can't they make these stickers?!"


Pull-apart packaging. Cereal bags, coffee packs, band-aid envelopes - a world of ease and pleasure in opening things that used to be a complete pain to open. And milk cartons actually open the way they're supposed to now. Remember having to take a knife to them half the time in ye olden days?

Of course, there are other packaging types that are still in their "to be improved" stages

Every goddamned time

Aaargh

But back to the good stuff:


Hair detangling spray and equipment.  These sprays (any brand) are amazing, and these brushes are MAGIC.

The multi-coloured pencil. What a marvel! Checkered paint can only be around the corner!

The fuel cap tether, attaching the petrol cap to the car these days. Such a little thing. Such genius.

Travel packs of wipes. Because little kids are sticky all the time, and carrying around a damp flannel in a plastic bag was not as handy.



This drain on the edges of swimming pools, that lets pools be filled to the very top.  I'm pretty sure that this is recent. I remember a time when pools filled level with the ground was the stuff of top-level decadent fantasy.  Now it's every pool everywhere, and it's so good.

And: mini-dodgems just for kids

What did I miss? 

What innovations have improved your daily life?

Things I Think While Using Public Transport

• Jeez, people are funny looking

• Where do I go for my train? Why can I never remember which platform?

• Man it's crowded.

• Still so many people hanging out "under the clocks", are they still meeting friends there? That's what we did before mobile phones.

• Why does this concourse still always smell of urine? It's open 24 hours, it's floodlit, there are shops and people and police everywhere. When are people pissing?

• Why are there so many cops here, what's going on? Maybe this is one of those terror threat things, should I be worried? Be alert, not alarmed. God, what a joke. Hoodies, backpacks, burqas. If I were a radicalised young Australian where would I take a bomb, here or Chadstone? Surely Chadstone makes more sense and would be easier. God, please let it be Chadstone and not here. Oh my god I can't believe I just thought that, I didn't mean it. What's happening to us, this terror alert crap is corrupting us all. Or maybe just me, I'm a bad person. No, I'm a good person for recognising I might be a bad person. Oh god, not this stupid feedback loop again. The loop - I need to make sure I'm on a Loop train. Does this train go through the Loop? Shit, I didn't pay attention and now I don't know. What station is this?

• OK, do I need to be at the front of the train or the back of the train? I can never remember, I never pay attention. Oh my god, like it matters! What, I have to walk an extra 50 metres when I get out? No, it's about time and efficiency, it feels good to manage this properly and get out just where you need to be. I rarely do that though. 

• Oh right, back of the train. I'll remember that next time.

• Seats, seats, are there any seats? There's one but it's in the middle. There's got to be an edge seat somewhere. Shit, I missed it. Should have taken the middle one. But so uncomfortable. Standing is better. Long time to stand though. I can't find a comfortable way to hold my bag. I should have brought a cross-body bag instead of this handbag with tiny straps I have to hold. It's hurting my back, the drag on my arm downwards. I'm not game to put it on the floor though. Damn, commuting is so much easier for men without handbags.

• Who the hell keeps their bag on a seat next to them when the train is full?

• Ugh, this person, hogging the edge seat. Just move over, would you? So annoying.

• I'm just going to stay on this edge seat, people can step over to get to the middle. It's too squishy in there, my legs don't fit and I get cramps. 

• Man, walking three blocks uphill from the station to my work has killed me! I'm so unfit. What's happened to me, I used to walk everywhere.

• It's nice to sit and read while commuting to work. Much better than driving. Though I do miss listening to Red and then AM on the radio. I could stream it on the phone. But how much data does that use? Funny how radio is no longer going to be free once it's all digital. Analogue radio is free but digital radio isn't, that's quite a change really. Like everything these days, every element unbundled and costed out, let pricing dictate behaviour. Bloody economists. 

• I want to play Candy Crush but it's too embarrassing on the train. Maybe another game. Is Subway Surf embarrassing? I'll just read the news instead. Twitter is ok, I can scroll Twitter. Not Facebook, obviously. Facebook is embarrassing. Why the hell do I care what people think about what I'm doing on my phone? Well that's just how society works, it's human psychology, quite normal.  

• What station is this? Should I call Y for my lift now or is it too early? They don't have enough of those train maps up on the walls, why is that? They used to be everywhere. Oh, I see, the trains now have bigger windows, there's not as much wall space. Hey, remember back when they had poetry on the train walls, was that here or in London? That was nice.

• Oh this poor woman with a pram and crying baby. How awful. Ugh, hope that kid stops crying soon though. Maybe I should try and cheer it up. But what if I fail, that would just be awkward. 

• What stop is this? Oh my god, have I gone past my station? It's so dark out there, I can't see a thing. Where are we? 

• Going in to work on the bus and train is OK, quite nice actually. But man, coming home sucks. Too crowded, and the trip takes too long. I'm exhausted. It saves money though. But shit I'm so tired. Bugger it, tomorrow's Friday, I'm driving.

"Commuting II" by Rebecca Wilson via Flickr Creative Commons

If I could

Time for a questionnaire blog perhaps?

I've lifted this one from Sunday Stealing by way of Princess Pandora Queen of Denial and The Plastic Mancunian, both of whose regular questionnaire blog posts I enjoy reading.


IF YOU COULD: 

Travel anywhere, where would it be?

Egypt, or Tanzania. Two places I've always wanted to see. 

Meet anyone, who would it be? 

Vincent Van Gogh.  

 Bring anyone dead back to life, who would it be? 

I'd bring back my aunt who died too young, two years ago. She was a good person and she helped a lot of people, and her death was of course a trauma to her family.

 Be anyone for a day, who would it be? 

Angelina Jolie maybe, or Bill Gates.
It would be cool to be living your dream. 

 Get anything for free for the rest of your life what would it be? 

Utilities! (gas, electricity, phone, water).
Insurance!
Our house!
But actually: clothes. I love beautiful clothes and would love to be able to buy them more often. 

 Change one thing about your life what would it be? 

More money and flexibility for travelling and holidays. 

 Have any superpower what would it be? 

Flying.  

 Be any animal for a day which would you be? 

A seagull. 

 Date anyone who would it be? 

I'll take Clive Owen, on a night Pandora's not seeing him.  

 Change one thing about the world what would it be? 

Humans' incapacity to learn from disasters. 

 Live in any fictional universe which would you choose? 

None in which I am my adult self. As a child, life in Enid Blyton's England traipsing around with the Famous Five would have been my pick.  

 Eliminate one of your human needs which would you get rid of? 

This one:

nuttakit/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 













 Change one thing about your physical appearance what would it be? 

My weight.  

 Change one of your personality traits which would you choose? 

My disinclination to socialise. I enjoy it when I do it. 

 Be talented at anything instantly what would you choose? 

Painting. 

 Forget one event in your life which would you choose? 

My flippant answer: The time I tripped while carrying a full tray of food while waitressing in Santorini, sending four bowls of spaghetti bolognaise flying over four horrified customers, my skirt flying over my head, and people from nearby restaurants still laughing about it a year later. 

My honest answer: toss-up between two. An incident in high school where I made fun of a friend I was fighting with, mocking her on her appearance. I was immediately, and still am, deeply ashamed of it.  And a couple of years ago, when I went up to NSW with my dad to pick up my grandfather to bring him to Melbourne to see his daughter before she passed away: we had to tell him the bad news and he sobbed; and the next day while we were walking I should have taken his arm to go up a step and I didn't, and he had a horrible fall and dislocated an arm. It was an awful couple of days.

 Erase an event from history (make it so it never happened) which would you choose? 

How to choose. The Holocaust? The world wars? (any war?) The genocide in Rwanda? The civil war in Syria? The invasion of Iraq? 9/11? The 2004 tsunami? Or a precursor event, such as the birth of Hitler?  I wouldn't know how to choose, quite honestly. What would you choose? 

 Have any hair/eye/skin color, which would you choose? 

Olive skin, very dark brown hair, and green eyes. 

 Be any weight/body type, which would you choose? 

It's hard to explain, but I'd like to be slim but not thin, slightly curvy but not too much, and moderately toned. In other words, a body that would look good in anything but doesn't stand out. Like most women I spent all my younger years being defined by my body, and am now invisible in it. I would like a neutral body, please. 

 Live in any country/city, where would you choose? 

I don't want to live anywhere other than Melbourne anymore. But in pure fantasyland, I'll live on Santorini or Naxos, or maybe some quieter island in Greece, like Amorgos. 

 Change one law in your country, which would you change? 

Well I'd like to say the way asylum seekers are being processed, but that is not even lawful.

In my state (Victoria), this one, passed just this year:

From 28 May 2014,under the Summary Offences Act 1966 (Vic)police and protective services officers (in designated areas) will have more powers to move people on. These include if they are concerned that someone is: •doing something that makes another person afraid of potential violence •blocking another person or traffic (or likely to do so) •stopping someone from entering or leaving a building •unlawfully buying or selling a drug of dependence (or intending to). Also, police can direct multiple people to move on, and can require names and addresses of people who they intend to ask to move on.
Source: http://www.lawhandbook.org.au/handbook/ch11s02s04.php#

I'm against this even though the government is able to use it for something good: to move the horrid people picketing abortion clinics.


 Be any height, which would you choose?  

I'm happy with my height. I'm 167cm which is about 5ft7 I think. 

Have any job in the world, which would you choose? 

An extremely well-paid animal keeper at a really good zoo. 

anankkml/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 Have anything appear in your pocket right now, what would it be? 

A winning lottery ticket. Not sure how it would get there as I don't play lotto, but still. 

 Have anyone beside you right now, who would it be?

My husband, in bed, watching a movie on TV together. 

Three skills

I think I am an intelligent person, but I am not gifted in spatial logic. I have real trouble figuring out those flipped around shapes where you have to choose which ones are the same. I have to turn a map the way I am going.

Many years ago I went backpacking with my cousin J and her friend J (we called ourselves Triple J, ha ha). The friend J was a wizz with maps. Whenever we arrived in a new city, she could look at the map and immediately know which way to go. My cousin J, like me, has a terrible sense of direction, but she has one weird gift, that she always knows which way is north. I only know which way is north from two places: at my house, and driving up North Road.

While travelling through Turkey with J and J, we went by bus to Canakkale. The road followed the coast and it is really beautiful. At one point I was unable to work out which direction we were travelling in and started poring over the map laboriously trying to figure it out. It was a genuine epiphany to me when good-with-maps J pointed out that the sea was on our right so we were travelling in the direction where the sea was on the right side of the road on the map.  I'm serious. And this knowledge has been seriously helpful to me ever since.

Apart from school geometry and map reading, there are three other skills I have struggled with. I have finally mastered them all, but not without great hardship and difficulty.

1. Knowing which way to twist a thing to open it

The key to mastering this valuable skill is one small phrase which I learned from a bartender I worked with many years ago: LEFTY LOOSEY RIGHTY TIGHTY.  Oh, the other people there laughed at this bartender, aged 23, intoning seriously "lefty loosey, righty tighty", but that phrase has been INVALUABLE to me I tell you.

2. Knowing which way to put the batteries in

I finally decided to teach myself this and remember it forever, just LAST YEAR. I don't think about positive and negative and such, I just remember the flat end goes against the spring. YES!

3. Knowing which way to turn when I step out of the elevator at work

This one has been the hardest. I spent eleven years in my last work building, and I memorized which way to turn coming out of the elevator after about nine years.

I've been in my current work building one and a half years, but I'm getting older and I don't want to struggle with this another seven years, so I've made a real effort.

My problem is, I overlook the obvious. Because I can't do something, I assume it must be really intricate and clever (instead of considering that maybe I'm just thick).  So initially I started by trying to keep the spatial logic of the building in my head. I'd walk up to the elevator bank, and consider which way I was facing in the lobby in relation to the street outside, then picture in my head where the street was in relation to our office window upstairs, and in relation to the elevators on our floor.

But then JUST THIS MORNING while composing this post in my head, I got into the lifts and stepped out at my floor, and suddenly realised that if I get into an elevator on my right, then I turn right when I get out. If I get into an elevator on my left, then I turn left when I get out.

As you can no doubt immediately work out, this means that when I walk into our building and into the elevator bank, I am already facing the direction of my office.  Which means even my initial mental mapping method should have been easy.

But it wasn't.

How is your spatial logic?