According to fiftisweb, Lucille Ball might have been the culprit who started the poodle cut hairstyle. However Lucille Ball did NOT look the way my sister and I looked when my mother decided to get US the poodle hair style.
My sister never looked as bad as I did. Her head was shaped nicely. My head is sort of box shaped. I looked like a gift wrapped in pubic hair.
I’m sure I’m remembering this correctly. One day my mother took my sister and me into one of those dog grooming parlors and demanded that we come out looking like poodles.
It was all part of an evil experiment my mother played on Cindy and me. You know how mothers want to try something on themselves, but are afraid because they don’t know what the outcome will be, so they use their kids instead? Well, Kathy escaped her Dr. Jekyll maniacal and deviant plot to destroy our self esteem.
My mother has a rather commanding presence (all 5’2″ of her) and even God would bow down to her if she wanted something badly enough. And what she wanted on this particular day was for two of her daughters to look like Chia Pet poodles while Kathy paraded around looking like a little princess.
I know – Chia Pets didn’t come out until 1982, but my mother is very creative.
The hairstyle experience was so traumatizing for me, I think I blacked out during the procedure. We were probably slathered with goo, then put into a coma while the Chia hair grew, because I don’t remember the growing process. All I remember is looking in the mirror one day and seeing a ghastly figure staring back at me.
I think Mom started a trend, though, because if you’ll remember in Ghostbusters, when the Bill Murray character acknowledged that his girlfriend looked like a dog, you’ll also remember that some of the cast from Ghostbusters spent some time in Chicago. They probably saw my sister and me at the Museum of Science and Industry or Brookfield Zoo outside our cages. I’m sure we were the inspiration for that part of the movie.
What was strange about that hairstyle (beyond its ugliness on me) was that as it grew out, my straight hair underneath it, as it grew above the fuzz, made me look like I had a tightly woven poodle collar hanging on the ends of my hair.
My mother made up for the humiliation later though, when she realized I had the self esteem of a dodo bird. After all the Chia part got cut off – years later – she entered me in an afghan hound beauty contest. I came in third runner-up.
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