Medusa
The Great Wig Excursion
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A note to those of you not actively competing in Irish dance--
It is pseudo-custom for most girls who compete in as Irish dancers to wear their hair in curls or, optimally, ringlets. Because these curls take a great deal of time, as they have to be rolled, slept on, and then unrolled, some girls have turned to wigs to make their lives a bit easier. Wigs are also used by girls who may not have hair long enought to acheive this "ideal". I am an impatiant girl with short(ish) hair, and, because I fit both criterion, I was deciding whether to make a go of them. However, in my more punkish high school days, I had competed in an orange-red pixie (and, as such, I feel a particular repulsion when faced by many situations and ideas which might be classified as conformist), so this descision concerned more than conveniance. Recently, as I have matured, I have found myself more often going the "way of the sheep", and I have had to decide whether I want to support this phenomenon as it has devloped.
Also note-- This essay was mainly composed between May and August 1999, and some of the more personal details (i.e. those relating to my ex., Dan) are outdated, but I stand by it as an intersting and somewhat amusing piece of work, anyhow, and so it is still up.
Terry Kelley sells wigs to Bracken dancers; find out more....
See Me In My Wig!
About a week ago, I decided to finally become the hyper-real being I had always longed to be. I decided I would better myself, and my image; subtly and semi-permanantly. I decided to make myself appear more acceptable in other's eyes. I decided that I would give myself the chance to become a princess. I decided to buy a wig.
I had not yet decided whether I was in favor of or opposed to the clumps of acrylics that have now become standard in competetive Irish dance costume. Should all girls be forced to accept the paegenty and exaggerations of myth that dance costumes promote? Should dancers be pushed to believe that to be a beautiful (Irish) girl, one must have waist-length curls? Should they accept the notion that a judge will not look at them without the conveyance of this image? Should they devalue themselves to that extent? If one accepts false hair, are they accepting that they are not full and proper to exhibit? Is it really this much of an issue? Why or why not?
I also wondered what the personal ramifications of such a purchase would be. If I made drastic leaps in the number of awards I accumulated, would these be entirely based on merit, or would the (much improved, since I stopped) image I displayed be a large factor as well? Would I look trashy (inexpensive wigs often make little girls look rather like {at the very least} they are playing dressup, and sometimes make them appear to be teensy "high-caliber call girls" {we've all seen it! especially when wigs are accompanied by makeup...}).
My mother drove me to a wig store not far from my old (read-parents') house, "Susie's Wigs." Having purchased a wig there in the past (a dark brown bob), I knew a bit what to expect. Susie's is owned by a short, thin asian woman with bright blue eyeshadow and pink as can be lipstick, applied with exacting technique. Her dummies' heads are extremely dated; some of the rubber ones look as though they were just waiting to crack, to split their pretty primped faces in two. The hair on the wigs appears generally ragged. Apparently, these are wigs that have been in the store for at least a decade, maybe longer. The wigs available for purchase are of a far better quality and in better physical condition than these. However, there is no way to tell from the racks and shelves. One must act entirely on faith in the beginning.
We had a difficult time trying to explain what we wanted in the beginning. Feis curls (and their qualifications) are a phenomenon I assume is almost entirely singular to step dance. She first assumed that I wanted it for a prom or some such thing. I had decided that I wanted it to be made of very bouncy and smooth ringlets(not fried at all!), and only just below shoulder length. I wanted it to be the very hair I had never had the possibility of creating (my natural hair is short, scrawney, thin, and doesn't take to curl at ALL).
After we briefly gazed around the room, I was led to a chair by Susie, who tied back my hair, refusing to let me touch it (i.e. the rubberband). Apparently, I will tear my own hair. Perhaps I will.
We began with one that was exactly what I hadn't wanted-- a curly clip-on ponytail that was far too long and extremely frizzy. Somehow, I wasn't particulairly comforted but, bit by bit, I began to recognise her expertise. We finally settled on a 3/4 size wiglet that gave me hair that looked like I had a bit of a nasty perm, but was not obscenely full, and didn't look unrealistic. Still, I had wanted ringlets, and really wouldn't be comfortable leaving without a wig that made me look like I had them. Would it be worth the (moral, emotional, or monetary) expense if the wig didn't make me look and feel absolutely perfect? Why couldn't I just go straight and plain instead? Susie convinced me that she could style the wig in whatever fashion I needed, and I was assured that, if it was not correct, it could be restyled.
While I was dealing with the ramifications of such a purchase, my mother asked if she could see a ponytail from which she could make a bun (she, too, has "short" hair, and hers is more wispy than mine). Susie assumed that my mother would want something similar to what I was getting. After all, My mother had mentioned that she might be using it in competition as well as in �real� life. Susie matched her hair color, went to the back, and then returned with something excessively fluffy and frizzy. Attaching it to my mother�s head, which watched with amusement the progression and the results, Susie proclaimed it a �nice effect. I was giggling at this point. To quiet me, she mentioned something that implied that adults needed to have fun, too.
Somehow, and, in saying this, I hope not to spoil the joy of many a curl junkie at home, I don�t think this was the kind of fun my mother needed.... She looked even more tiara-bound than I had, and, although her hair was of politician-wife proportions, she wasn�t quite able to feel the security that sometimes comes with a helmet. I imagined her on stage. What if it came off? What might the parents of the school say? And, if my mother couldn�t wear this kind of hair, how the heck could I be so presumptuous. Wasn�t I (sort of, except in the case of alcohol buying, and room and car renting) an adult as well? Even though I felt a seven-year-old might easily live down the trauma of a wig-related accident (at the least, at that age, most people were going to blame the whole trial on the mother, anyway, and things might be more easily forgotten at that step), could someone a bit older? I thought about it for a while, and then decided that, were there some horrible wig fiasco (anyone remember Hairspray, the movie?), I was still among the anonymous mass of girls, and was not in a prominent enough place for it to be vastly remembered. I decided I could live down yet another Irish dance embarrassment. After all, I sometimes seem like a whiny seven-year-old at heart, anyhow. I�ve been youthfully durable so far....
So, I had decided to go along with the movement... However, it was then that I started to wonder if my descision had been the correct one. For example, was my goal (long, easy curls) even traditional? Granted curls, have been a part of Irish dance for a very large part of the Twentieth Century. However, I have seen little evidence supporting a use of curls in dancers' hair that was specific to Irish dance alone, and not a part of of the culture at large. One might just as well claim that stays or corsets are a traditional part of the ballerina's costume, and should be worn, simply because they existed in tandem with (and on the stages that showed) some of ballet's gratest developments. In fact, the pictures I have found of Irish dancers (most in John Cullinane's book on costume) show mixed groups of hairstyles, and, when they are curls, they are in a style befitting the time period itself (Shirley Temple, anyone). Obviously there may be a correlation between Irish culture and curly hair, but the styles may just as easily hark back to specific periods in world culture. As such, it might not be my duty to maintain the stereotype, if it isn't even specifically "traditional to Irish dance" in the first place.
However, this is not to say that curls are not an intregal part of present-day Irish dance culture. I cannot remember the last time I saw ANY winner of a championship in less than shaggy, bouncy, frilly hair. Even if the style was not absolutely historically based, it is the standard. I do have goals, and to achieve them, I might just need to play the game, as it were. I decided to make a compromise with myself. Until I was in championships, and during Bracken performances (for the sake of group uniformity), I would wear the wig. After all, it was much more convieniant than curlers... However, after I moved up (as Preliminary, is , ultimately, a level I will be satisfied if I don't move out of), my hair would be mine to style, attractively, as I pleased. Then, I felt, I could be an example to others who might wish to subvert the ideal, as I would have reached a position of influence. I would blend in anonymously, achieve my ground, then set out on a strident campaign for hair reform (well, perhaps not too strident.....).
Later, Dan and I, driving through central Phoenix after a show at a library in which I got to see a childhood teacher (ALPS) again, as well as after a birthday-gift buying fiasco, stopped to pick the wig up, on the orders of my mother. He had already read the bulk of the essay above, which was already in existance at the time, and so he had a vague idea of what to expect. {He has also, if i might brag and boast about my boy, learned the difference between my various steps (though he knows hardshoe better), knows what a feis is, and what all the levels are(i.e. beginner 1-2, novice, prizewinner, prelim. and open championships, etc.), and also knows the difference between group and hardshoe sets are, among lots of other aspects of the dance. Ok. End of boast. So he was there and knew what was going on...}. We entered Susie's, found the wig to be exactly as we had requested, signed the form, and took it home to drop and show it off.
My mother wasn't there, but my father was, making a strawberry, merangue, and icecream dessert for himself. It was late afternoon. While Dan copied my dad's example and made a sundae for each of us, I decided to experiment with my new purchase.
Tieing my hair in the ponytail as Susie had originally done, and putting the great mass on the back of my head, I pulled the combs inside taught around my "headband" line. The transformation was immediate. All of a sudden, I saw, staring back at me, a foreign girl, albeit with eyes and even HAIR the exact same color as mine. This girl was clean, well kept, even almost as girly as a "My Lord, Scarlet" antebellum southerner. Her curls were as bubbly as her disposition, and she skipped to keep them adrift. She could have been a cheerleader, and probably was, in her spare time. Her leaps were perfect, or, at least, the bobbing of her strands alluded to their perfection. It was a shock to realise that, not only could this girl be me-- she WAS me!
At Feile Rince Tucson (May, 1999), my first feis back, I think I shocked more than a few people... Granted, my scores did not markedly rise (although I had doubted they would, as I was quaking in my fiberglass and could not even seem to remember my slip jig), but I think I almost scared a few people (who know me as that whispy-short haired girl you see in my pictures) with the realism of the fibers. Cathy Callahan took my portrait (not really a big deal, but still...), and I had at least 15 people tell me either that they didn't know it was a wig, as Heather McElligott-Sparks told my mother, or that it was one of the best wigs they had ever seen.
I still am not quite sure whether this trend is a positive one or not, but, with the wig, I did feel like I was more thouroughly able to play the part of the little ceili princess. My ringlets bounced like obnoxious snakes, and I didn't even have to stay up all night to achieve the result!
P.S.-- if there is anyone in the Phoenix/Tucson area with a cute, sturdy, vintage wig box to sell, please have them drop me a line...