Big Hair; Bigger Problems (The Great Follicular War of the 80's) - The 80's #1

 Some of life's constants:

- Gravity

- Taxes

- Acupuncture at 50 miles per hour whilst downhill skiing amongst the majestic pines.

That last one... probably just me.

But a universal constant is the fact that every person who lived through the 80's as a teen was nearly suffocated at some point... by their own hair. And I'm not just speaking figuratively.

No, quite literally in fact. Choked out by a chemically-enhanced, ozone-depleting cumulus cloud; a beauty-pageant thunderhead surrounding the dome.

If you weren't there, you might believe I'm prone to exaggeration. How adorable. But let me paint you a picture:

Imagine your head.

Now double it.

Now picture it after it's been plugged in to a small nuclear reactor fueled by volumizing conditioner and hairspray. That's your baseline.

We called it Monday. On special occasions we added mousse.

80's Hair Philosophy Went Something Like This:

If you didn't have to turn sideways to enter through an interior door or exit the bathroom, your ambition was negligible.

Someone who truly committed in the 80's had an architectural structure on their noggin.

A breeze couldn't move it. A strong wind wouldn't shift a single strand. A hurricane might rearrange its priorities, but that's about all.

And for some reason, it seemed like big hair improved many band members guitar playing. Weird.

We spent many hours in front of mirrors teasing, blow-drying, spraying, scrunching, spraying again, backcombing, spraying one more time, and then topping with a spritz of "shine enhancer" - also from a spray can.

We weren't happy until we looked like a unicorn had zapped us with a taser.

And Then There's the Smell:

Traverse the halls of any high school and you were immediately assaulted with a combination of aromas like artificial fruit, hot metal, and chemical experiments testing olfactory fortitude.

The safety authorities should've been consulted.

Instead, they were probably off being busy regulating practical things, like forklifts and surgical instruments. Meanwhile, teens were turning bathrooms into science labs and gluing their hair into patterns only seen in geological formations.

Bangs were a competitive sport. The girls of the 80's especially will appreciate this truth:

You didn't HAVE bangs. You TRAINED them.

The goal was to create a massive wave shaped, front-facing hair shelf capable of pinging submarines in the Pacific and stealing satellite photos from Russia.

There Was A Deeper Meaning

However, as with all trends that seem absurd upon reflection, we didn't know it at the time.

That big hair reflected something meaningful: the sheer audacity it took to be a teen in a decade that encouraged maximizing everything.

Maximum noise.

Maximum colour.

Maximum glitter.

And maximum volume, in every sense of the word.

Our hair wasn't making a statement - it WAS the statement. And that statement read as follows:

"I'll take up as much space as I possibly can before adulthood comes crashing down!"

Whaddaya know? First life lesson of this 20 part series incoming.

Modern us tries to compress ourselves into little digital boxes, where everything is as minimal as possible. Tidy and efficient.

Somewhere behind us, though - maybe deep within us - 80's big hair philosophy still whispers. Even if our scalps have been tamed. Or completely abandoned.

Sometimes, you need to take up space. Loudly, ridiculously, and in a manner that could borderline on being hazardous to environmental controls.

Yeah, so we might have accidentally contributed to a small atmospheric glitch. But hey, we did it with style.

So to my fellow mid-lifers I say:

If you're ever feeling small emotionally, physically or mentally - or perhaps just because your boss said "Synergy" and meant it - take a minute to pause and reflect.

Somewhere inside you, that teenager still exists. That young, vibrant being that told the incoming stage of adulthood to "watch out" with all the vim, vitality, and confidence that let us walk around proudly in public while looking like a cotton candy tornado.

If that isn't empowering, nothing is.