By Traci Foust

When I was a kid, my mother tried to cover my great big grapefruit shaped forehead with bangs and lies: “If this was 17th century France,” she’d say, “you’d be considered a regal woman of status.” Which of course meant nothing to me because I grew up in the eighties in the San Francisco Bay Area where status was defined by how many pairs of fluorescent socks you had to go with your fluorescent Jellies.

Socks you can change.

Foreheads last a lifetime.

Separately, I’m sure these two haircuts are very nice, but at least I answered the burning question on everyone’s mind in 1983: Is it safe to give yourself a Toni home perm and use an entire bottle of Sun-In on the same day?

To make matters worse, not only was zero progress being made on the everyone-grows-into-their-head myth, but it seemed my forehead was actually pushing my hairline toward the back of my ears. By age eleven I was rocking the style of a sixty-year-old Cockney fish monger—and apparently using his dentist. When my grandmother’s eyes hazed over in a film of cataracts my mother banned her from cutting my bangs, yet the only advantage to this was I no longer had to walk with my head tilted sideways to make everything look even. (See Also: Scissors in the Dark : One Sight-impaired Woman’s Quest to Become a Hair Stylist) But it wasn’t just my big head and teeth that kept me from truly immersing myself into 1983. Washing and taking care of my hair was a huge problem for me as a kid. I just wasn’t what you’d call a big shower taker. At eleven it was my OCD and fear of fainting in a steamy bathroom that stopped me from adopting good hygiene habits. At thirty-nine it’s kind of the same thing but with Netflix and Funyuns. [Read more...]