Today is picture day at my seven-year-old daughter’s elementary school. Last night she asked me to set her fine, straight, golden streaked hair in pin curls. While I knew she had read about pin curls in her Molly, an American Girl: 1944 book -- 1944 being a golden age for pin curls ­­­-- I was still taken aback.

When I was a girl, every year when picture day rolled around, my mother insisted on setting my slack, black hair. One year it was pin curls, another year rag curls and another pink foam rollers. On the eve of picture day, I slept restlessly with bobby pins or roller holders sticking into my skull while wearing a nylon, floral print roller bonnet or worse, toilet paper wrapped around my head to protect my mother’s handiwork.

In the morning, I would watch in disbelief as she unwound springy curls which made my round face look even rounder. By the time I sat for my picture, the curls would have deflated, losing much of their bounce.

This was the ‘70s and my straight hair was actually in. Both Laurie Partridge and Marcia Brady had shiny, satiny smooth manes hanging from parts down the center of their heads.

Not me.

My mother, who had her hair teased and “put up” weekly at the Golden Strawberry Beauty Salon, forbade me from wearing my hair parted in the middle. She insisted it just wasn’t flattering -- in hindsight she was right. But with my unnatural, picture day curls, I felt like a fraud. I longed for a school picture that actually resembled the girl I looked like every other day of the year.

And now my daughter wants pin curls for her picture day!

I shouldn’t be surprised. She did request a Princess Leia like hairdo for her kindergarten picture. She even supplied me with printed instructions on how to achieve the style from a booklet that had come with one of her dolls. Not one to damper such enthusiasm, I complied. And after a couple of attempts at twisting up her hair into even buns on either side of her head, I had to admit -- she did look darling.

But pin curls are out of the question. I fear she will be startled in the morning by the transformation. We compromise and settle on a curling iron induced flip (parted on the side, of course) that will leave her looking much more like herself.

By Tina Bournazos

Labels: '70s, An American Girl: 1944, black hair, bobby pins, elementary school, hair parted in the middle, kindergarten, Molly, pin curls, pink rollers, Princess Leia, school picture day, Tina Bournazos

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