Beauty

Was there anyone ever as beautiful as Elizabeth Taylor? No. I think I chose "Elizabeth" as my daughter's second name because of her. Elizabeth. The name evokes beauty and beauty without peer. She is gone, but it has been a joy to indulge in the coverage of her in her magnificent and radiant youth. She was breathtaking.

With today's beauty being defined exclusively by blondes, it was refreshing to remember how brunettes used to be considered beautiful. If you had brown hair, you had brown hair. You didn't streak it blonde or outright dye it that flat, plastic yellow. No, you enhanced it and enjoyed it because of women like Elizabeth Taylor or Audrey Hepburn. And Jackie Kennedy, let's not forget her. These women actually had to be beautiful because they did not have the blonde tresses framing their faces to distract the observer. I don't know how many times I have analyzed the face of a blonde only to discover she was really pretty ordinary looking. I mean, take away the hair and you have..........uh.........not much to look at (or listen to).

TCM is filled with glamorous brunettes, but I think Farah Fawcett changed all that. When that poster hit the streets, suddenly every woman had to be a blonde. It was no longer just glasses that made a woman dowdy, it was brown hair. Brown hair abruptly became "mousy" (when have you ever heard "brown" without "mousy" preceeding it) and those of us with locks of that luckless and calamitous shade just didn't measure up. It's still that way.

But something happens when a woman dyes her hair blonde. She suddenly has a "blonde" persona. She thinks she may actually now be Farah Fawcett or Cheryl Tiegs or Sandra Dee or Cybil Sheppard or.......... you name it........... and the rest of us start to look at her in a different way. Even Hilary Clinton has now fallen prey to the blonde highjacking phenomenon. I catch the secretary of state on TV and find myself concentrating not on what she is saying, but on her hair and wondering, "what can the woman possibly be thinking?"

The woman beneath yellow hair dye now conjurs up "the blonde"..........starts to imagine she is actually dazzling and desirable, starts to feel enchanting and facinating. It's all such a laugh because most dyed blondes I know are pretty ordinary. Sorry girls, but it's the truth. And why would you want to look like everyone else? Every dyed blonde looks like every dyed blonde looks like every dyed blonde.........hockey players' Stepford wives come to mind.

If you dye your hair blonde you are telegraphing that you think you are a blonde. You telegraph that you are like the other dyed blondes at the party. Know what I mean? I know it sounds complicated, but as I have said before, we are our hair. When I was at university, hair was so complicated I couldn't figure it out. I had curly hair, but straight was in, so I found myself actually contorted on the ironing board pressing it into submission! After a few of these humiliations -- sharpened by being caught frizzled-headed a few times at a cottage party or out in the rain -- I cut it all off in defiance of convention. Later, when going grey, I started to dye it, but soon realized this was a losing game because the roots never quit. Ah roots, the moment of truth! These determined little power houses led me to throw away the dye and let it all grow out. Whew! Now my hair is my hair and it has its own power. My logic is that grey hair gives a woman licence in how she dresses because she can never be accused of trying to look younger with those pink high heels. Afterall, look at all that grey hair!