The New Rules for Blondes

by Coppock, Selena

  Religion jumped into the fray during the late fourteenth century, when Eve was usually depicted as a blonde and the Virgin Mary as a brunette. In John Milton’s Paradise Lost both Adam and Eve are described as having “golden tresses,” and I’m glad Adam isn’t immune from some blame here because dude got in on that apple-eating action, too. But of course the Virgin Mary is almost always shown as a brunette. Being blonde ain’t easy, I tell ya.

  Whether you are ashy or brassy, you’ll face the aforementioned stereotypes and assumptions. There’s strength in merely knowing who you are and where you fit in, though. I was born of an ashy-blonde mother and a brown-haired father, and yet I’m a brassy blonde. Weird science, I know! This result is not a scientific impossibility, just as two pigmented parents can indeed produce an albino child. I wear my bright, brassy yellow hair with pride, despite the haters. I’m spunky, opinionated, and somewhat loud—the textbook brassy blonde. You should wear your color, whatever it may be, with pride and without apologies. If you get backhanded, patronizing “compliments” from coworkers or acquaintances, let them roll off your back, because your chosen color works for you and makes you happy. Trust me, I’ve gotten many a backhanded compliment in my day.

  Years back, a coworker (with a horribly patronizing attitude, a wry smile that silently communicated constant disdain for others, and a head of mousy brown hair) tried to make me feel bad about my eye-catching, voluminous hair. We were standing by the copier in the oppressive law firm where we were both working as paralegals. In truth, most of my day was spent avoiding work and perfecting the “silent weep” in the bathroom stall. It was a sad time in my life—I was fresh out of college, perpetually broke, living in an unfamiliar city, and super lonely. I was too poor to afford a colorist, so I painted in my own blonde highlights at home. Very badly. But I was still blonde, and that gave me a sliver of happiness. Miserable Coworker and I were chatting about the TV show The Sopranos and making small talk when I made a joke:

  “I’d love to be a Mafia wife—it would be so easy! Just bring home the money, husband, and don’t tell me where it came from,” I joked, attempting to break the ice with a coworker who seemed only capable of spewing harsh judgment and mean-spirited sarcasm.

  “You could definitely be a Mafia wife. You look the part. I mean, look at your hair.” She gave me a smarmy look that clearly communicated her real meaning.

  “Ya know—I think that you meant that comment as an insult, but I take it as a compliment, because I like the way Mafia wives do their hair. They have nice color and a lot of volume, so thanks.” And I marched out of the copy room. Mousy Brunette Coworker and I kept our distance after that. You know that saying, if you mess with the bull, you’ll get the horns? Well, I’m a Taurus (bull) and I have my own version of that saying: “Mess with my hair and you’ll get . . . well, you’ll get nothing. My hair will not be messed with. I love it and I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think. You might think it’s tacky or too bright, but I love it.” I need to work on tightening up that saying. It doesn’t quite roll off the tongue.

  Blondes—whether ashy, brassy, combination ashy and brassy, well coiffed, badly coiffed—take a lot of abuse. Many people see our hair color and simply assume that we’re stupid, conniving, materialistic sluts. You know who you are, though. Whether you’re mostly ashy and only a little bit brassy, or 100 percent brassy, or ashy for life, you should hold your head high. After all, in the grand scheme of things, a little bit of negative prejudice is a small price to pay for having amazing hair.

  CHAPTER 2

  RULE: Don’t Be Afraid to Run in Heels

  For two years running (heh), bubbly blonde Kelly Ripa gathered a posse of women to quite literally run in heels in Central Park in New York City. Ripa teamed up with the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health to run a 150-yard sprint in stilettos to raise money for the Heart Truth campaign. It’s good that this is a short race because sprinting in stilettos is actually terrible for you since it puts a ton of pressure on the balls of your feet. But sometimes it simply cannot be avoided and you must do it for your sanity and your safety. A few years ago, I ran in my heels down Newbury Street in Boston, in pursuit of a mugger who had stolen my cute satin purse. He probably had scoped me out thinking, She seems a bit tipsy . . . her purse is dangling from her wrist . . . and she has a great head of blonde hair—easy target. But the assailant messed with the wrong lady. Because I’m certainly not afraid to run in heels, especially if I’m hustling in pursuit of a cute, retro-style purse.

  It was the night before Thanksgiving—that dreaded night when Americans migrate back to their childhood homes, not unlike Mary and Joseph returning to Nazareth to be counted. Only Americans aren’t going anywhere to be counted; rather, they are heading back to their hometown bars en masse to bump into old middle school and high school “friends” and assure everyone that life is good! Everything’s coming up roses for me. On Thanksgiving Eve 2006, my best friend and fellow peroxide addict, Suzanne, and I were doing just that in downtown Boston.

  Suzanne and I were all dolled up—heels, tight jeans, big earrings, dope hair (my dope hair being the only constant, other than death and taxes, in this topsy-turvy world). When we inevitably bumped into the old Weston High School crew, I wanted to show them that Weston High School’s Class of 1998 winner of “Best Hair” could still defend the title. We drove into downtown Boston from the suburbs, parked her black Jetta on posh Newbury Street, and had a lovely dinner at our favorite restaurant, Croma.

  “All the other Weston High alums are at that bar that used to be called McCarthy’s,” Suzanne informed me.

  “McCarthy’s is gone? I move away to New York City, and within two months, the bar where we’ve been drinking with fake IDs for years is now gone?”

  “There’s still a bar in there—same exact setup—just now it’s called Lir, I think. Anyway, that’s where everybody is.” Suzanne always had more connections than I did. We had both been popular in high school, but I was always a bit too loud and opinionated for some people, and by “some people” I mean “every male in my town.” An encyclopedic knowledge of Guns N’ Roses trivia and quotations from comedy movies will win you big points during college but won’t even get you on the scoreboard in high school. In fact, those things will earn you a reputation as a bit of a weirdo in a town where most girls are Stepford Wives in training and boys are American Psycho wannabes.

  “Well, I’m glad we’re getting a little liquored up before we head over there. I can’t deal with seeing most of those characters sober,” I responded. In fact, I was secretly hoping that we’d somehow end up at the Thanksgiving Eve reunion of another high school—any other high school. In high school I’d been seen as a spazz, and even when I was sixteen years old, I just couldn’t abide the sight of sixteen-year-olds driving brand-new luxury cars. Plus, the mix of flagrant entitlement and complete ignorance to the value of a dollar worked like an antiaphrodisiac on me, so I tended to fall for more blue-collar-type guys from our rival high school. Nothing puts a target on your back during the already arduous days of adolescence quite like dating guys who your entire hometown summarily hates based on geography alone. But I’m like Mary Chapin Carpenter, and everything I get, I get the hard way.1 I could picture it now—Suzanne and I would walk into the bar just next door to our high school reunion at Lir but a world away. It would be another high school’s T-giving Eve reunion, where we’d stumble upon a phalanx of guys I could date: tough guys who were dude’s dudes—cops, firemen, carpenters. Guys who knew the value of a dollar and had worked hard their whole lives. Guys whose palms felt like sandpaper when they rubbed your neck during a good-bye kiss in the front seat of a pickup truck.2 Guys who had season tickets to all Red Sox and Patriots games and whose cell phone ringtones were a mash-up of “Dirty Water” and “Tessie” (if such a mash-up is possible). Real, pure Masshole thugs. Bonus points if they had Boston accents and said stuff like “When I go to M Street Beach in Southie to get col-uh, I go st
raight from Caspah the Friendly Ghost to friggin’ lobstah!”

  But I knew that meeting such a star-crossed Romeo wasn’t in the cards that night. It was inevitable: Suzanne and I would go to the Weston High School reunion and rub elbows with guys who we had known since we ruled the sandbox at North Avenue Nursery School. Guys who we had witnessed projectile vomiting during an ill-conceived sixth-grade whale-watching trip in Boston Harbor. Guys who had bobbed in the rough waters of puberty, braces, and breakouts while Suzanne and I treaded those same waves.

  Despite the impending high school reunion festivities later that night, we had a delightful dinner consisting of gourmet pizza, a few dirty vodka martinis, and a bottle of wine. We probably should have been worried about the potential for a DUI at the end of the night, but instead we were nervous about our fashion choices. Would our outfits properly showcase just how fantastically well we were doing in adulthood? We hoped so.

  After dinner, we walked along a surprisingly desolate Newbury Street to head up to Lir, where a flood of disingenuous “Great to see you”s and half hugs with back slaps awaited us. But we never made it to Lir that night.

  That night, I was carrying a black satin purse, a 1970s-style sack hanging from two silver rings that I clutched in my hands. So the sack hung down from the rings, not unlike a nutsack from a dude’s body. (It’s not gratuitous dick talk when it’s an illustrative explanation, right?) My fashion style is very 1970s—I was born in the wrong era. I’m perpetually inspired by the look and style of the late Farrah Fawcett in her heyday. I was wearing tight bell-bottom jeans, big earrings, a tight black shirt, and black high-heeled boots—an outfit also known as “the Uniform.” On top of all this was my jazzy 1970s-style tan puffy vest with a horizontal stripe across the chest and fur around the hood. (That vest is so disco ’70s, it should come with Quaaludes in the pockets.) Suzanne and I probably looked like a blonder version of Charlie’s Angels in which one angel had been tragically killed in a roller-skating accident but the other two knockout, platinum-haired crime fighters soldiered on. Or perhaps we looked more like a walking target—two drunk blonde chicks, one of whom had a purse dangling from her dainty wrist. To this day I’m convinced that the stereotype of blondes as helpless pushovers laid the groundwork for the events that unfolded after we left dinner.

  “So will all the usual suspects be in attendance?” I nervously asked Suzanne as we walked down Newbury Street. As she answered my inquiry, we saw a teenager riding an undersized dirt bike down the sidewalk directly toward us, so we moved into single-file formation to let him pass (because we weren’t raised by wolves and we’re polite). Just as he pedaled past me, he scooped my satchel purse from my hand and kept biking down Newbury Street.

  “What?” It took a moment for me to register what had just happened. That kid had just ripped my (retro-style) Gap purse from my hands and was now pedaling for dear life down Newbury Street. The Gap purse that contained all of my designer makeup (OK, there was some CoverGirl in there, but the rest of my makeup was from M.A.C and Sephora, I swear), my money (six dollars cash!), all of my credit cards (mostly maxed out), and my ID (featuring my name and an old address from when I lived between two projects in South Boston and had blue-collar thugs at my fingertips—those were the days!). My ID! My ID! I’d be unable to get on the bus back to NYC without my ID! I was about to start a new job the Monday after Thanksgiving—I had to get back to New York!

  Once I was done processing the fact that I had been robbed (it probably took one-tenth of a second, but it felt like forever), I turned on my heels and started chasing the punk-assed perpetrator. I was half in the bag, and I had something to prove: Blondes might catch your eye and stand out and seem like easy targets, but we are not to be fucked with.

  “HELP! HELP!” I shrieked as I chased the cycling criminal over the uneven slabs of sidewalk, my high-heeled leather boots propelled forward by surprise, anger, and fear. I then remembered something that Oprah had told me (and a million other women, via the television): During an emergency, you shouldn’t yell “Help,” because people are inherently selfish (don’t I know it!) and won’t respond to cries for help, but they will respond to screams of “Fire,” because they think that they could be harmed by a fire. Humanity, I tell ya. With this newfound knowledge, I changed my refrain.

  “FIIIIIRE! FIIIIIRE! FIIIIIRE!” I yelled, as if doing an awful impersonation of Jim Morrison belting out the Doors’ most famous song. Suzanne gave chase just a few steps behind me as she dialed 9-1-1 on her cell phone. We ran for blocks down Newbury Street, passing an Indian couple who then joined in on our little crime parade, bless their hearts. We also cruised by a few jaded valet attendants, who must have seen this type of thing a million times, as they simply watched the chase scene zoom by without doing anything to assist. This pissed me off, and I was already shrieking for my life, so I let a few choices words fly for the cowardly valets: “Fuck you! Fuck you! I hate you!”

  I finally caught up to the thief on his bike, and for at least one full block I was running directly along his right side and screaming. There was nothing left to do but swing my arm at him and hope that I made contact, so I did just that. My fingers were knotted up, and I heaved my fist and arm left, directly into his chest, prompting him to lose his balance on the bike. As if in slow motion, the bike began tilting dramatically to the left, then to the right, being pulled downward by the blessed force of gravity in the bizarre motions that precede a person eating pavement. He fell over on his left side as the bike shot out from between his legs and directly into my running lane on the sidewalk. Thank God I used to be a dancer and I took figure skating classes in childhood (mostly for the post-skate hot cocoa, but apparently I retained some skills) because I was able to jump over the bike as it slid across the sidewalk and stick the landing on the other side, like a little Romanian gymnastics wunderkind.3

  But the moron mugger wasn’t ready to throw in the towel—the chase continued on foot. I was ready for it, though—I could run up and down Newbury Street in heels while screaming swears all night long.4 The ridiculousness of the situation was starting to affect my moves, and I decided to change my message to the perpetrator. I’d reason with him and make my purse seem like it’s not worth all the trouble.

  “I’m so broke! I work in publishing! I only have six dollars in there, asshole!” I screamed. After a few blocks of sprinting while learning about the financial hardship of a publishing career, the thief gave up, either out of pity for this poor publishing drone or because his abandoned bike was more important than my forty-five-dollar Gap purse. He tossed my purse into a bush to his left, cut right and crossed the street, then bolted back down Newbury Street in the direction we had just come from. Shaken and shocked, no doubt, he grabbed his bike and pedaled away into the darkness.

  “Holy fuck. Holy shit. What the . . . holy fuck—” I could barely form words. Retrieving my purse from the bushes, I unzipped it and found everything still present and accounted for—makeup, money, ID, credit cards—everything.

  “Dude—he didn’t even take anything. Everything is still here!” I marveled.

  “Yeah, well, how would he have unzipped your bag while he biked and fended off your punches? He probably didn’t have time to grab the wallet or anything,” Suzanne said.

  I couldn’t believe it—everything was there. I kept fingering the contents of my purse. It had been in a stranger’s hands for a few blocks, but here it was, back with me and no worse for wear. Would it become my bad-luck purse now? Was the hoop-sack formation just asking to be snatched away, or was my hair color just asking for trouble?

  “Oh, cops are on their way,” Suzanne informed me.

  “Holy shit. That was insane.” I said, exhaling a puff of warm air into the chilly night.

  We thanked the Indian couple for their instinct to help, and they moved along, perhaps to their own Thanksgiving Eve high school event. Suzanne and I stood on a corner and ruminated about how the bizarre chase had unfolded.


  Within a minute or two, an assortment of Crown Victoria cars pulled up and assembled around us. Some were obvious cop cars, others were unmarked cop cars, all were Crown Vics—proving a point that I had argued with my dad the last time he was car shopping: Purchasing a Crown Vic for use in civilian life would be like purchasing a fire engine to drive around town. It’s a utility car, and it’s not for civilian use.5

  The officers driving the Crown Vics parked every which way all over Newbury Street, the abutting side street, and the sidewalk. Within moments, Suzanne and I were surrounded by cops—some were in traditional uniforms, others were in street clothes, all were hot (to me). They are public servants—show some respect (in the form of shameless flirtation), I thought. Perhaps this night wouldn’t end badly after all. I didn’t stumble into a blue-collar high school reunion where I met some hardworking natives of Kickassachusetts—they stumbled into me.6 You could practically smell the Dunkin’ Donuts French Vanilla coffee on their breath, they were so Boston.

  “Can you please describe exactly what happened, as best as you can rememba?” asked a young cop with a notepad. I carefully recounted the night’s events, and Suzanne assisted: nice dinner, walking down Newbury Street, then the next thing I know I’m chasing some crazy teen on a bike and screaming swears, then I’m punching him, then I’m jumping to clear the bike, then we’re on foot, then my bag is in the bushes and he’s gone.

  “Wait, the perpetrayta didn’t get away with ya packetbook? You have ya packetbook now?” the cop inquired. It struck me that this is exactly how things get confused at crime scenes. What seems so obvious and clear to the witnesses can actually translate as quite confusing and illogical when explained. Of course I knew that I chased down the guy and gotten my bag back—Suzanne, the Indian couple, and some lazy valets had witnessed the whole thing! Said forty-five-dollar Gap purse was dangling from my wrist! But the police officers had no knowledge of this—they only saw two frightened and keyed-up, perfectly coiffed young ladies telling a very unlikely sounding story, in tandem. It also struck me that the cop referred to my purse as my “pocketbook,” and I wondered what other Massachusetts-isms he had up his sleeve. I bet that he refers to sprinkles as “jimmies” and calls Stop & Shop Supermarket “the Stoppie,” and when he visits towns on the south shore of Massachusetts, he calls it “going down the shore,” I thought.