Blessed Is the Blowout

Exact coordinates will be anonymized to protect the identities of the innocent; let's say I was in one of the five boroughs. Excepting Bosetti, I've long given up attempting to explain what I want at a salon, mostly because no one ever seemed to believe that I could possibly be seeking what I was asking for. It’s sadly a common motif in my narrative arc(s)—they don’t see The Vision. Perhaps this is a sign of a bad attitude, but then again, I think I'm Just About Old Enough to Do Whatever [I] Want. So, in a similar spirit, I let a perfectly normal haircut happen to me. Most of the appointment was spent on a blowout, using round, bristled brushes to create that bouncy curl style many women seemingly long for. To me, it’s like a custom from a land I have no passport stamp for (at least not since my days at Catholic school, when I was essentially bullied into regular heat styling at dawn, but let’s trip lightly over that).
The feminine urge to turn hair into a daily hobby—if not a strategic operation—with stronger resolve than some political eras is nothing new. But a strain of the culture seems to be freshly lobbying for the “put together” look—a humble form of aspiration. There’s the revived interest in old-school hair rollers and investment tools like the Dyson Supersonic or Airwrap, the volumizer heat brush from T3, the cordless curling iron from Lunata—specifically designed to free women from cords; take what you can get I suppose—and the Essentials Set from Good Side, consisting of a silk pillowcase, mask, and scrunchie. In a Diana Vreeland why-don’t-you-way it suggests we need a reliable buffer of gentility in our lives, the better to protect a set style, and cushion our falls before we rise again. Perfect for the barrel curl styles of Christian Girl Autumn.

Many would have seen my new ‘do as a marked improvement. But I have spent my entire adult life pummeling the pavement in the opposite direction of this kind of look. The damaged bits were gone, and my head was certainly lighter, especially with a brutal winter wind whistling through all those freshly-lifted cascades. It was brunch hair. Bottomless mimosas. Let’s-watch-The Bachelor-tonight-hair. Peaceful routines and seasonal rituals. In short, a form of real life which I’ve never been convinced I’m cut out for.

Could I be an ambassador of goodwill? The blowout felt like its own personality, clamped onto my own. I was hosting it, and was I not obliged to honor my guest? Perhaps the hairdo is something like the bumper sticker of the human body—"Coexist"—like a declaration of affiliation. Maybe there is a potent coalition of elusive urban alt bitches and suburban normal gals to be built. Beauty may be an evolutionary imperative, but would my own slogans really elevate me above, let’s say, koans printed on tea bag labels? Shit, I want my home and mess to be blessed. Becoming nearer to an opposite, like willing to be taken down a peg, even as a brief exercise in facade dismantling, seemed apropos.

Via the Wayne Koestenbaumian principle of by-avoiding-it-I've-approached-it, now I have to fess up regarding this episode’s relaxing of the reins: my grandmother had died a week prior to this. Most topics of conversation have since seemed like some aimless boogie of words starting small and ending even smaller. I have attempted to leap into something more lively and amusing here, but now I take a seat into how this was a woman who I never saw without her things just so—her jewelry arranged, and her hair done. She came from an era when a hairdo was an unequivocal statement of intent. It was something to be maintained; changes wouldn’t be taken lightly. Me, a contemporary creature, I dash around in the more devil-may-care fashion of my day, trotting out modulations and adjustments hour to hour: I'm sanding gesso off a panel, so let's get this off my face and scrunched into a bun; now I'm writing, let's braid it into five pieces so I won't comb into it with my hands using all the anxious vigor of considering twenty different subjects simultaneously. Brushed out or balaclava’d? Serum or dry shampoo? These are too many options to weigh when one is also attempting to calculate, among other small differences, whether a 1.5" stretcher bar reads as cute, zany, or interesting when compared to a broader arrangement of 2" depth pieces. My precise concerns are sharp, unsympathetic, and understandably alienating. They don’t tend to bend, curl, or bounce.

Patricia Bradley (née Murphy) also had exacting aesthetic standards, but her care was more gregariously showered onto the people around her. I'm not sure a week ever went by where her hair and nails weren't well set, but this doesn't strike me as vainglorious. Other people have to—or rather, get to—look at you. There's something gracious in making sure all's up to snuff. Her cultivation of beauty—which once won her admiration as the winsome mermaid of the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club—seemed an extension of her generosity. She had had a halo of snow white hair since the 80s, lifted and whorled into a soft, hovering gauze.

This, I always imagined, was something that had to be created, though the process remained mysterious to me, and, as allegedly she and Marilyn Monroe once shared a hairdresser, maybe it too had a touch of the ineffable. It seemed like a crown one shouldn't poke at, though that’s an icy image which belies the warmth she had for pretty much everyone, provided they didn't trifle with her. If someone did choose that unfortunate path though, they and all their doings could well get filed into the "So What department," as she'd say, and good luck to the poor sap who might want out of such a well-stuffed, dust-choked, and totally forlorn folder. Perhaps I am making her sound infamous—not a bad thing per se—but I’m not quite talking about a Bette Davis character here, or Davis herself, whose reputation seemed to inspire apocryphal warnings of another kind of gale harsher than the blow-dryer’s hottest setting. Think more like Grace Patricia Kelly, who Paddy Murphy met before fame. Irish girls, both.

In the last week of her life, she had perfectly gloss-coated nails, with dustings of glitter on her hands. My nails have never looked this good. The tips of them curved slightly, which struck me as strangely glamorous. Then again, so was Peter Hujar's 1973 photograph of Candy Darling in the hospital. And a picture by David Wojnarowicz of Hujar, prints of which appear to be dated the year I was born, was something of a lesson, not necessarily in charm or enchantment, but in reality: here's what death will look like on someone. There are other images to pass over, though, too—her watercolor paintings on the wall, the tubes of bright pink and coral lipsticks in the bathroom. Revlon, Chanel, MAC. Warm Soul Mineralize Blush. Hair spray. Maybe my way has been different, but would it be so bad to take cues from someone else, with a lifetime of experience? I’ve always liked looking over the ingredients of almost anybody’s show, like, "Ah, so this is how they build themselves." This is what I’m doing in the bathroom at your party, by the way.

How was the haircut? Fine! I hardly cared either way. With a branch of my tree having been cut off, even the most contradictory look would have been wearable. It's been a couple months now since I washed the blowout out of my hair—I also forgot the whole point of it was to preserve it for the week, at least—and not long after I went all out on a DIY dye mélange of candy pink, peach, tangerine, and boiled lobster. Stiffened into crispness with the faux beach-bedraggled look—but not waves!—courtesy of the classic Bumble and bumble Surf Spray. I'm brightening up the scene for others, and cosplaying the discourse, you see. It’s a different regimen, but I think my grandmother would have gotten a kick out of it.

People often ask, after I color it: who does my hair? I say, "I do," and that’s serviceably factual but not the whole truth. Asking a woman about her hair can be like throwing out a prompt of “tell me everything.” A one or two syllable response is best, otherwise it could get too involved, enclosing one inside of backstory, the latest plot developments, dreams for the future. A captive audience is still captive. The next time I feel on the verge of telling everything, like what I saw, and what I think it means, I should go get a blowout instead, to avoid blowing up.

Paige Katherine Bradley is an artist, writer, and editor from Los Angeles. A former Associate Editor at Artforum and Arts Editor for GARAGE, much of her writing was published there from 2013–2021, and more recent pieces have appeared in frieze, VISCOSE, Spike Art Magazine, and on Montez Press Radio. Her monographic essay on the art of Suellen Rocca was published by Matthew Marks this year, and her recent exhibitions include a group show at Theta and a solo project at Lubov, both in New York.