Blowdrying her hair, a shock of fuchsia where it used to all be grey, the stylist exclaimed, hot granny!
The thing was, she wasn’t a grandmother, never even a mother, and was shocked to hear herself referred to that way. In fact, she was very irritated by it.
Not everyone is who you expect them to be, she thought.
Sharon sat in the hairdresser’s chair as he curled and sprayed. She asked him to make the curls bigger, the height of her hair higher, wondered aloud if the colour was too muted. But he tempered her, he told her to be practical, not to go overboard, that the colour was bold enough.
As she sat there quietly, angrily conceding, a refrain began to build from deep inside her: I’ll show you, I’ll show you all. I will become the ‘do. I will be the embodiment of a pink bouffant. It will be bigger, it will be bolder. You will see me coming.
The pink
bouffant
Sharon's new hairdo takes on a life of it's own.
"I will become the ‘do. I will be the embodiment of a pink bouffant."
Back at home, she fussed with it for a week. It took 84 hot rollers and 36 large velcro rollers to get it the way that she wanted it.
Steam rose from the bathroom counter, fogging up the mirror. One set of curlers hadn’t been enough so she’d bought seven. They lined up in rows puffing out little bursts of steam like pink train cars waiting at the station.
The shade of lipstick she’d bought didn’t match her pink hair perfectly. It was the wrong shade of pink. She would have to go back to the beauty counter in the early afternoon, when the light was brighter. In the evenings, the sun cast a rosy glow on everything. That’s why the lipstick looked like it matched, but she could see now it was tinted toward coral. And she needed a cool fuchsia. She was learning the nuances of the power of pink.
She started shopping. At first it was only going to be for the bedroom: New sheets, pillows, duvet cover. Then she got a new pink bed frame. Then pink nightstands. She was surprised at how many pink lamps she could find, choosing which style was the difficult part.
Her shoes; all pink. Her jewelry: all pink, rose gold and rubies and pink glass crystals.
She yanked out the white flowers in the planters on the front stoop, and replaced them with bright pink roses.
Her nails, (she went with gels), were long and rounded, and pink, she had her toes painted to match.
A man came in to do the wallpaper. She heard him on the phone, It’s like being inside a pussy in here… pink everywhere. She was disappointed in his lack of imagination. It was like being inside her head, her hair. In fact, it was more like walking around in her brain, which, according to medical textbooks, was also pink. She thought about telling him. She was mad he said pussy in her house.
She brought her car to the dealership. Make it pink, she said. He couldn’t do it. Fine, then I’ll get something else. This was costing her a fortune, but she no longer felt right driving around in a grey car. Grey was for old maids, grey was for grannies.
He put the order in. It would be pink. And, when it arrived it was: sparkling pink and shiny, vibrant and buzzing with energy.
Her tea was pink; hibiscus, it started to tint the inside of the porcelain cup, which she replaced with a big pink tumbler with a pink handle.
She stopped when she looked at her dog, a little scruffy white shitzu and pictured him pink. Instead, she bought him a pink rhinestone collar and a new harness. Everyone started asking how old she was (the dog, not Sharon). This annoyed her, pink wasn’t only for girls. HE is 12, she said.
Her friends wondered how long it would go on. Wouldn’t you just get sick of all that pink? It’s so much pink, they said to one another.
But they didn’t know it wasn’t aesthetic, it wasn’t a choice, it was a resolve. A resolution to herself, to be the Bouffant. To embody the ‘do.
The bouffant was giant by now. The rollers nearly doubled, the height nearly two feet. The colour would fade and again she would sit in the chair, wait for the dye to take, her eyes lighting up at the bright rich shade of magenta. The stylist never said hot granny again. He worried about her now; she’d gone off the deep end into a strip of rainbow, she seemed obsessed. And not in the fun way he’d say it about a new trend, Ob-sesst!
He saw her in her car; the wheels, wipers, windows, the whole thing pink. Her hair took up the whole front seat, it was bursting out of the sunroof. It wasn’t normal, it couldn’t continue. Had he started all this with suggesting something more fun, something wild and daring?
He blamed himself. But for the wrong reasons.
She was happy she no longer had to choose. Breakfast was strawberry jam on strawberry pancakes. Lunch a smoothie with beets. She read only books with pink covers, replaced her grass with pink moss, her glasses with pink lenses. A winter coat in pink was hard to find, but she did it. If it wasn’t pink she didn’t wear it, didn’t eat it, didn’t buy it, didn’t sleep in it.
One day she looked in the mirror, Sharon, she said to herself. No, Bouffant, it said back. You are Bouffant.