American Thighs Read Online Free PDF Page A

team of hair professionals laboring night and day to maintain it—but the style inevitably trickled down to the aspiring fashion plates of a certain high school in Florence, Alabama—of which our Tammy was but one—however, a dedicated and very enthusiastically creative one.
    Tammy found that by employing an ingenious combinationof tools readily available even in Florence, Alabama, she could erect an almost exact replica of the coveted Dusty Springfield Bouffant on her very own personal head. The first item she needed was a couple of wiglets. Wiglets were an early incarnation of Travel Hair—small handfuls of hair that one could secure at various points on one’s head to supplement the supply of hair growing naturally. They came in about four colors and looked vaguely reminiscent of hair, and so if you stuck it underneath some of your actual hair and combed over it, satisfactory blending could be accomplished and a desirable pouf achieved.
    But even with the addition of three or four wiglets’ worth of hair, Tammy’s hair could not be harassed into the desired height for the Dusty Springfield. Through what I’m sure was much trial and error—although after hearing this story, I’m wildly curious as to what all she REJECTED as an acceptable add-on—somehow Tammy made the unbelievable discovery that if she took an ordinary Kotex feminine napkin (I always loved that name) and pinned it TO THE TOP OF HER HEAD, she could then cover it with a combination of her own hair and her wiglets and VOYOLA—she could pass for Dusty Springfield anywhere, at least as far as hairstyles went.
    A word about the Kotex thing. They were huge—like loaves of bread almost—minipads were decades away. I cannot personally imagine having enough hair growing on my head not only to attach three or four wiglets to—but then to also completely COVER a big giant Kotex with it? I’m thinking the headof hair that could do all THAT was plenty big to start with, and by the time she got done, her head musta looked like a hot-air balloon.
    But anyway, she got away with this bizarre subterfuge for many, many months, to the mystified envy of all her friends. To NO ONE would she reveal the foundation of her very bouffiest of bouffants—and I can certainly understand her need for secrecy. And everything was fine, as they say, UNTIL…Her secret would probably have been safe for all eternity if she had just stayed off that roller coaster.
    Uphill was fine but she lost one wiglet on the first downhill and one on nearly every subsequent scream-filled swoosh and turn. Of course, she and everybody else on the ride remained oblivious to the happenings on her head until they coasted back in to the starting point—where she arrived, bouffless, wearing nothing on her head but a big fluffy white Kotex pinned VERY SECURELY to the top of her head.
    She got a pixie cut the very next day.
    Asset-Preserving Tip
    I just don’t know what to tell you here. There doesn’t seem to be anything anybody can do to dissuade us from committing the occasional follicular felony. I suppose if that’s the dumbest thing we do, we could consider it a mercy. That’s all I got. If I were to come up withsome means of convincing us to give up the lifelong pursuit of unattainable hair perfection—however that manifests for each of us as unique and disturbed individuals—it would bankrupt a multibillion-dollar industry that’s banking on that very pursuit, and I don’t want THAT on my conscience.
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Hit & Run on Memory Lane
    V ivid Memory: I am fourteen and therefore infinitely wise—and supremely confident in that wisdom. This wisdom renders me totally without patience where any Mere Ordinary Mortals might be concerned. (The Mere Ordinary Mortals group—MOM—being comprised primarily of My Mother, whose every communication with me is met with heaving sighs and rolling eyeballs.) I