On Bangs

Bangs--I’m talking about the hair that sprouts from the top of your forehead and will cover your face unless you cut them or push them to the sides of your head.   Getting them “right” can be difficult.  There have been many prominent bang styles over the years.  Females have worn them really short, really long, swept to the side, feathered, heavy  (think Cleopatra), and light and wispy.  Sometimes the bangs “of the moment” are to be worn straight and flat against your forehead while at other times curled bangs rule the day.  

How many tears have been shed over mangled bangs?  Enough to fill the sea, surely.  If the current style is long, and good old Mom goes a little too short---warning-- the first glimpse in the mirror will result in an explosive crying fit!  There’s not much you can do to remedy that kind of calamity.  Being treated to the comment, “They’ll grow out,” really just doesn’t cut it at the time. 

  

You would think no one but a trained specialist could create attractive (and straight) bangs.   One of the most popular techniques of my youth involved laying tape across the bangs before proceeding with the scissors.  The theory was that the edge of the tape would form a guide which would make cutting a straight line a snap.  Ha.  Guess what?  For this technique to work, the operator had to be able to apply the tape in a straight line first.   Apparently not an easy feat.

No matter what kind you wore, there’d come a time when you’d tire of your bangs.  Then you’d be faced with the long, uncomfortable growing out phase.  What a nightmare.  You’d  try to push them over to the side, but they would have none of that.  They wanted to lay right back where they were.  So you’d go for the barrettes.  Does anything look more awkward than little barrettes an inch from your center part line holding  back the top of the bangs when  the bottom of the bangs are still trying to crowd back onto your face?  I think not.   It was a big day when you could finally tuck those puppies behind your ears! 

These are all memories of times long gone.  I’m not a kid anymore desperately hoping to avoid ghastly Frankenstein bangs when facing a home trim.   I’m actually pretty good at self-trimming at this point.  (Incentive to improve:  being able to avoid running  to the hairdresser between regular haircuts.)  But now my bangs have a job to do.   They have become the curtain that shields an aging forehead from the gaze of curious onlookers.  There are new hazards to trimming your bangs at my age.  The other morning I was trying to snip into the bottom of the bangs to give them  a little texture when I suddenly felt eyelid pain.  The sad but true fact is, I’d caught a little skin with the end of the scissors.  Don’t know if that would have happened a few years ago.  I’d like to believe the injury was related to the fact that texturizing can be a complicated and risky procedure, not because the skin covering my eyeballs has decided it no longer needs to stay closely connected to the eyeball region, but can lollygag around and "play chicken" with the scissors.