It`s Saturday lunchtime at a suburban northwestern mall, as a young shopper finishes her Big Mac, stows the trash, sits back down and flips her head between her knees. She`s not fainting. She`s styling her hair-letting gravity restore the last quarter inch to her 6-inch-high, teased-and-sprayed bangs.
On a Wednesday night on Chicago`s Southeast Side, a 13-year-old stands to give her opinion during a televised broadcast of a town meeting. Frantically, the cameraman probes and probes, trying to get a clear shot of her face as she talks. He gives up. Her blond bangs stand 4 inches from her scalp and cascade down in a swath covering her forehead, eyes and nose.
As classes let out one windy afternoon at Chicago`s Benito Juarez High School, girls rush for jobs and home, their coats and jackets whipping around them.
Their hair, however, never moves.
Nature is no match for the lacquer on their pompadours, poufs and Winged Victory fringes, some reaching 6 or 7 inches in glorious height.
Big Hair-styles that rise, say, a half-foot off the scalp-is blooming all over the Chicago area, mostly on teenagers and often on Hispanics.
See it in bangs arrayed like an Easter-grass pillow of pouf or a home-grown tiara. See it as a ponytail on the top of the head, teased and tumbling down like a veil behind big bangs. See it as a plume of hair caught up in a clip, which creates a feathery ridge down the back of the head.
It is a highly calculated and architectural style. And it takes a Big Girl to wear Big Hair-a major commitment to a style that becomes virtually a way of life. None of this comb-and-roam jive that leftover-from-the-`60s moms try to push off on their daughters.
We`re talking curling irons and blow dryers and diffusers and picks and mousse and gel and hair spray-lots of hair spray, maybe even three kinds on one head.
Then there`s the time needed to get the teasing and the spraying right. And the jeers of parents and boys to be endured once Big Hair is high, wide and handsome. And the dangers of rain and gym class. And the doctors who won`t include your hair when they measure your height for your school physical.
Taking the heat
A Big Hair girl doesn`t have to be tall, but she`s got to be able to take it.
”It`s a hassle,” says Marilyn Ortega, philosophically. She`s 16 and a Juarez sophomore with lush, curly Big Hair. ”But it`s the style.”
Fashion mavens will posit that Big Hair started a decade or so ago with Farrah Fawcett and continues today with the likes of Janet Jackson, Chaka Kahn and Paula Abdul. But the girls who do the teasing and spraying today rarely mention stars as their inspiration. They say they got the itch-and the secrets of getting their hair up-from older girls.
And there are secrets to Big Hair. The process is a protracted, complicated one of washing, blow-drying, curling with an iron then teasing, spraying, drying, teasing, spraying, drying, teasing, spraying, drying-you get the idea. Some aficionados use mousse or gel in the middle.
And it takes, if not hours, then good half or quarter hour to get the Big Look to stand tall.
That`s where the dangers of gym come in. Students get only 10 minutes to dress after the classes, hardly enough time to get their hair back in order, especially if the class is swimmming. That`s why Maricruz Cervantes, 14, a Juarez freshman, is the envy of her classmates. ”I stay in the gym until I finish,” she says, smiling. ”I have lunch after gym.”
A life-threatening situation
Big Hair wearers needn`t expect praise for all this work and sacrifice. On the contrary, parents carp about birds` nests and compare their daughters to a whole barnyard of animals-roosters, peacocks, goats and Woody Woodpecker. They also gripe about the electricity used by curling irons and hair dryers.
”My ma doesn`t like to give me money for hair spray,” says Dusanka Vunjak, 13, who has trimmed her bangs to about 4 inches since the TV cameraman had such difficulty finding her face. ”She (her mother) bought a can of hair spray for herself, and she`s hiding it from me.”
And if parents aren`t enough, there are the boys.
”Their hair`s as hard as a rock,” says Jose Jimenez, 19, and a senior at Juarez.
”Yeh,” adds Vincent Norton, 17, a Juarez junior, ”you could break someone`s car window with it.”
But hard is the idea, guys-a good crust so Big Hair lives up to its name. That means a girl`s hair spray must hold up its end.
Tamara Pavlovic, 14, and the daughter of a beautician on Chicago`s Southeast Side, finds that she needs three kinds of hair spray for her blond, 4-inch `do. Avec gets the hair up initially, and Bold Hold fastens it during teasing, she says. A product called Hair Specific is for the days when she hasn`t washed her hair the night before.
”When my hair is soft, I nearly have a heart attack,” she says.
Getting rid of the flakies
Hold-ability isn`t the only hair spray issue. On the dark side is, er, flakes. Hair spray applied liberally-most girls use a can or a can-and-a-half a month-simply comes off in tiny flakes unless a Big Hair wearer finds precisely the right brand, or blend of brands, and washes her hair every night, Big Hair wearers say.
Edie Brueckert, a secretary from Skokie who also has a beautician`s license, is older and wiser at 24. She`s worn her bangs teased up and the sides winged out for seven years.
”You should wash every other day, because the natural oils come out with daily washing,” she says. ”The flaking is because they put on too much hair spray.”
Both rain and cold present yet another challenge to Big Hair wearers. Getting wet means getting sticky and losing your lift, so the Big Hair crowd clutch at umbrellas and sprint for cars and doors. Hats, for fashion or for warmth, are simply not done.
”I don`t ever wear hats, not even in the wintertime,” says Brueckert flatly.
So why does the devotee of Big Hair put up with the Huge Hassle? It`s simply worth it, of course.
Remember those jeering boys? Well, when they grow up and go to bars, their comments can be ice-breakers. Brueckert says her top-notch topknot always attracts attention on the singles scene. ”They say, `Hey, look at that `do! How long does it take you?` It is a converstaion piece-and that`s good, depending on the man,” she says.
Most Big Hair devotees find the style flattering and good at mitigating flaws. ”Your face looks different with big hair. It draws it up and makes it look thinner,” says Rosa Jimenez, 17, a Juarez junior.
Big Hair also means sophistication, a rejection of the short hair and straight, flat bangs of childhood. ”My mother made me have short hair when I was little, and I hated it,” says Tina LaRosa, 16, a student at Niles West High School. Her bangs are big and her long hair behind is caught up in a pony tail on top of her head. ”I promised myself I would have long hair when I was older,” she says.
”With my hair down,” says the 13-year-old Vunjak, ”I look four or five years younger.”
Who`s listening
If Big Hair isn`t popular with parents, it`s downright passe to some hairstylists. Celia Enriquez, manager of Regis Hairstylists in the Golf Mill Shopping Mall in Niles, calls it the ”plastered-together-and-s tanding-up”
style and says about a quarter of her customers ask for the kind of layering of the hair that makes for big styles.
”It`s not for the `90s,” she adds. ”Soft, feminine looks are in. It`s the beginning of a new decade.”
To make matters worse, the style ”tears up your hair,” Enriquez says. The continual teasing causes breaking and splitting. The daily coating of hairspray prevents the hair from breathing.
It`s that kind of talk that means a Big Hair wearer must be strong and dedicated. In a that`s-silly voice, Edie Brueckert counters the criticism, saying she has her hair trimmed regularly and conditions it frequently to keep it healthy despite the teasing and spraying.
As for Big Hair being a Big Bummer in the `90s, Brueckert says, ”I`ve been looking around. I think it is coming back. Maybe it was out for a while when short bobs were in, but now I think it is coming back.” –
