HALLIE EPHRON: Last week I wrote about applying to be my local library's new Writer in Residence, and reminisced about an early piece I wrote about growing up a closet athlete in the years before Title IX funded girls' sports.
When commenters asked me about it, I realized my FIRST task, whether I get named Writer in Residence or not, is to find that piece and start building an archive of my work.
Hair (1998)
"I want my hair cut like that," I'd beg Mr. Latour, offering up my dog-eared third grade picture. What I wanted was a shaggy, unplanned look. What I got were bangs hacked across and sides that flipped up, giving me the dreaded Bozo the Clown look.
I tried to salvage the mess by setting my hair. Each morning, I brushed and brushed to make the hair curl under.
In the afternoon, I'd be standing out in right field during one of the boys' pick-up games I'd wheedled my way into. I can still feel my socks scrunched halfway down inside my Mary Janes. If I ran my fingers through my hair, I'd realize that my perfect pageboy had erupted and just then, the fly ball with my name on it sailed past.
When I was twelve, someone invented the bubble. You had to back-comb your hair into tangled clumps, then smooth it into one massive hair ball. Waves of hairspray turned the spun confection rigid. Sometimes we added a guiche -- this is French for spit curl. But we used clear nail polish, not spit, to glue down the curl.
I got a bubble the same year I won Best Sixth Grade Girl Athlete. Only Sixth Grade Girl Athlete was more like it.
That year, I spent lonely afternoons shooting hoops. I'd be aiming a tired volleyball, imagining the clean arc that would take it whooshing through the hoop, when I'd have to drop the ball to hold down the hair mats that were flapping up and down in a sudden gust of wind.Reading this ancient piece makes me smile. Isn't choucroute a wonderful word?
My daughter gapes at my sixth grade picture. She thinks I personally invented big hair. The French word for this, she informs me, is choucroute. And in that photo, it does look as if I've got a perfect mound of sauerkraut on my head.
My daughter keeps her hair sensibly restrained in a pony tail as she streaks up and back on the soccer field or anchors the 4X4 relay. When I tell her she gets her athletic ability from me, she does a double take. "You?" I dig out my Best Girl Athlete award. She eyes it skeptically. "So what teams were you on?"
"There were no girls' teams back then," I tell her, "unless you count cheerleading. But still, I played. A little baseball. A little basketball. And I think I could have been really good if it hadn't been for my hair."
I expanded the essay a few years later for an essay that was published in Elizabeth Benedict's wonderful anthology, Me, My Hair, and I: Twenty-seven Women Untangle an Obsession. (I repeat: Never throw anything away!)
Which brings me to ask, what might you have excelled at if there'd been the opportunity to learn and practice when you were growing up?
Sports were not my strong suit when we were in school, but I can relate to the hair issues of the time [in my case, it was the frizzy perm disaster] . . . .
ReplyDeleteI had my share of frizzy perms, too. And the smell...
DeleteI love this, Hallie. Thanks for finding it! I had no idea you were a girl athlete, but I can relate to the hair thing.
ReplyDeleteI've never been any good at ball sports. My high school did have girls' softball, volleyball, and swim team. I loved playing the cello, but instrument and lessons were all at school, and mini-skirts took precedence in ninth grade. My family didn't have the money to own the cello and pay for private lessons.
A closet cellist! Who knew!?!
DeleteI absolutely love that line in your conversation with your daughter: "And I think I could have been really good if it hadn't been for my hair."
ReplyDeleteAs for what I might have been good at if I'd had the opportunity: Math. But math is so sequential, and we moved around so much that different schools were always on different pages of different lessons. Math was a plague to me all through high school and college. And then, if you can imagine, I landed a job teaching "math" (lower level to be sure) to middle school students. Now, my husband is an engineer and lives and breathes math. So I would pump him for information: "I know what the kids are going to ask me . . ." (all the questions I had wondered) and he would explain. And then I would explain to the kids, and they did really well! But in the process I fell in love with math, how everything dovetails so beautifully, etc. I was quite excited when I taught the kids, and they got enthusiastic, too. (And I was constantly thinking things like, "Man, I wish I had know that when I took that algebra class," etc.)
Mat was my strong suit until I hit trig and then washed out. And I taught it, too, to little kids. I remember how delighted I was to discover the notion of base ten, and that numbering systems could have different bases. And the beauty of geometric equations. And of course I love a subject in which there IS one correct answer.
DeleteI could appreciate that last point, too 😃 On a more serious note, I think some of my kids with difficult lives liked that about math.
DeleteRight, no shades of gray.
DeleteHallie, we also had bubble haircuts, but without as much hairspray. And with bangs, curly ones. Nail polish on your spit curls? Oh, no.
ReplyDeleteNo athleticism for me, because my thick glasses meant no depth perception. Until I got contacts, and started jogging, with great joy. It does turn out that I have a very good eye for hitting the basket, or making the shot, or hitting the bullseye, whether it's basketball, the wastebasket, shooting a gun, or letting loose a dart. Maybe I could have been a marksman?
Like Elizabeth, it turns out I'm actually good at numbers, too, and also had a disastrous algebra class. I had a job in the mid-70s where I multiplied lots of numbers in my head, rather than add each one into the adding machine individually. But that's not math, it's arithmetic, and they are completely different thought processes. I realized it when a friend and I shared booths at consumer shows, and we helped each other with sales. She had invented a patterndrafting method that I still cannot understand, very math-y, but she was helpless when it came to sorting out our sales, figuring sales tax, and working out percentages and profit margins. Math vs. arithmetic.
"Math versus Arithmetic" - I need to think on that one. PS I eventally got a PhD in educational measurement - statistics can be fun. Really.
DeleteGah, Hallie! I barely squeaked through a required statistics class in grad school (feeding punch cards into an early computer). Managed to scrape out a C, my only one all the way through to PdD, and it made my brain hurt.
DeleteStatistics is the line in the sand for so many, isn't it?
DeleteI loved it! Nutty, I know.
DeleteShould we refer to you as Dr. Ephron and Dr. Maxwell, Hallie and Edith? Very impressive!
DeleteIt's a handy title if you want to throw a little weight around.
DeleteRunning. I might have been good at running. And soccer--using my feet better than using my hands. All other ball sports--nope. Other team sports? Nope. But that was because, like Karen above, I had poor eyesight. But unlike others, I had a sadistic PE teacher who delighted in humiliating me. 6th-10th grades, I endured this woman. I don't think I ever told my parents, it just seemed like I had to endure. Imagine standing at home plate and this woman throwing the ball over and over and over and over, all while making comments to the rest of the class. Then, in disgust, telling you to go stand at the end of the batting line. Rinse and repeat. I didn't have the energy to worry about my hair.
ReplyDeleteI'm hugging little Flora virtually in solidarity. What a cruel thing for that teacher to do.
DeleteThanks, Karen! I wasn't her only victim. Sophomore year on the field, those of us who were putting very little (none) effort in the game were told to run the track. At that point, the entire class left the field and ran the track because everyone was disgusted with her.
DeleteAn act of solidarity!
DeleteMy hair was the wrong texture for "big hair." Too fine. But I had my share of frizzy perms in the attempt for something stylish. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteNever any good at sports and I never wanted to be. I remember receiving a letter telling my I had to work on my "ball skills" in elementary school. I was, however, a decent musician - piano, violin, viola, and voice. Had I practiced a little more, I might have been more than decent.
I was lousy at piano - my teacher gave up on me and taught me to improvise and read chords. I was'n't very good that that either.
DeleteWhat a delightful essay. I too have hair that tends to do unfortunate Bozo the Clown flips. Thankfully, I missed the Bubble by a few years. In high school, there were girls' basketball, tennis, swimming, and volleyball teams, probably because Title IX passed in 1972, when I was either a Freshman or a Sophomore. Girls' soccer started in time for my little sister to play, but was not available for Margaret and me. Dad had coached soccer in the late '50s/early '60s (his lads at Portland State were a motley group of international students who had to wear American football jerseys for their kit) and encouraged us to dribble and shoot in the backyard. Plus we had come back from our 6 months in the UK in 1972 as rabid soccer fans. So who knows? Had soccer been an option, I might have tried out.
ReplyDeleteBOTH of my grandkids play soccer now... and my grandson is mad about Lionel Messi.
DeleteHallie, reading your essay was a fun look at peeking into the life of someone a bit younger and her hair woes. In my time, we didn't have hair spray yet. Oh, my grandmother certainly used it, but it wasn't anything I even thought about until my later years in high school. Even then, other girls used it but I didn't.
ReplyDeleteGirls' sports. Nothing I came close to excelling in but that was probably because I never paid attention. Living in the rural area where I did, school was my opportunity for being with my friends. Gym class, to me, was for chatting with my besties. Plus, I seemed to be rather uncoordinated and was no good at anything. Except when we had a unit on gymnastics. Oh, I was great at those, could even walk on my hands. After 2 weeks of that we were on to something else.
Years later, my daughter had the same gym teacher as I had. She was very athletically inclined, and good at all sports. The way I heard it, the gym teacher was shocked to learn that Melanie was my daughter. She could not believe it.
Hey, at least she remembered you!
DeleteLoved your essay, Hallie. Hair cuts and styles were a constant battle with my mother who always prevailed until some time in high school. I remember the insult of "bangs," the agony of teased hair and, of course, my 3rd. grade perm. Ack! As for Title IX, it sure changed everything for millions of girls and women. I understand the regrets of those who came before.
ReplyDeleteI wish I could tell my JRW friends that I missed out on something because of social ideas of what "women" could do. But I think that I was too lazy to excel, to blasé to pursue, and too hung up on other personal things to "get it" until it was very late indeed. So, I won't claim I could have been something if only. I just didn't do it.
and that's another otopic... we ALL have something we were too lazy/tooblase/too hungup to pursue or put in the effort...
DeleteHey, what's that sound? The opening of a Costco-sized can of worms.
ReplyDeleteDon't worry. I'll save those for the Festivus Airing of Grievances. :)
Ha ha ha!!!
DeleteLike KAREN and FLORA, I had poor eyesight, but I had a big goal while in junior high (grades 7-9). I wanted to get a school athletic letter, so I did all the required sports (basketball, volleyball, field hockey, track and field, cross-country, gymnastics) and referee for 3 years. Academics was easy. Phys ed was hard for me since I was not a natural athlete but I succeeded. I still have that athletic letter.
ReplyDeleteBrava, Grace! You're our resident sports star!
DeleteWe had ZERO girls' sports in the 1960s, except intramural basketball and gymnastics. I was the last one cut from freshman basketball, and didn't even know about gymnastics until senior year, when it was way too late to get into that pursuit. But again, poor depth perception would have been a drawback.
Grace, good for you!!
DeleteThanks KAREN and FLORA! But that was the height of my sports career. I dropped phys ed in high school since the teams were really competitive and I knew that I wasn't up to par.
DeleteBut you ARE a champion walker, Grace! That takes ability and endurance.
DeleteI think when sports WORK for kids, it's because they do what you did, Grace.
DeleteI was what was then called a tomboy. Sports, shooting, running, climbing, all came easily. We even had a girls softball team. I refused to join despite the coach asking numerous times. Why - well, girls! Underhanded pitching - no, no, no. let me wind up and let loose.
ReplyDeleteI worked in an emergency room as a teen. I was a candy stripper, but the flavor was there. More than anything I wanted to be a trauma surgeon. Even got accepted pre-med at Cornell. My parents absolutely refused to allow me to attend. I could become a nurse, not a doctor. As my mother said, "Women marry doctors, they don't become them." I was heartbroken. I didn't want to be a nurse, which in those days was a whole different profession, Cherry Ames notwithstanding. I did end up taking multiple first responder courses and my first aid knowledge has come in handy living in the woods, but I do regret not pushing harder.
That is so sad Kait! And to be accepted at Cornell (!) and pre-med (!).
DeleteMy sister was accepted to MIT on a scholarship and my parents said basically she couldn't go. We lived on the West Coast and maybe they thought it was too far away. It wasn't the colleges that were holding women back, in some cases it was our own parents.
Oh, Kait... that is so sad. (Though I'm still giggling at the typo: I was a candy stripper) Seriously what a shame. We've come a long way since those days... I hope
DeleteOh, Kait, that is terrible. What a wasted opportunity.
DeleteA fellow candy striper!
DeleteWell, I never stripped, just saying. LOL
LOL! And I can't even blame auto correct!
DeleteWhen I was growing up in the 50's and 60's girls didn't have extracurricular sports opportunities. We had Little League for boys. We had various sports in our school's PE class such as soccer, volley ball, field hockey, gymnastics, tennis, etc.
ReplyDeleteWe had an after school girls soccer and field hockey team and I was chosen for both. I also was on the school girl's track team. I felt I was athletic. I wish I there had been a community push for girl's sports. But alas there wasn't.
But my daughters and granddaughters have opportunities which is wonderful.
I remember we had two classes of girls in PE, 30 of us, lined up in two lines, two balls, shooting for the basket. It took most of the period just to get to your turn up. Pathetic really.
DeleteDoes anyone LIKE their hair? I'm a member of the stick-straight club.
ReplyDeleteI loved pickup afterschool soccer, but we had no teams or leagues. My less-than-progressive Cincinnati HS only had a field hockey team and yes, I completed a successful college interview wearing my pre-WW2 tunic and shinguards. Cross-country was a boys sport, so I ran mid-distance and hurdles on the track team. In college, I rowed crew, played pickup coed soccer, and took tennis for gym class.
Wow!!
DeleteWe had field hockey in the fall, basketball in the winter, and softball in the spring. I would have done so well at soccer or track. No other teams for girls. And the year the girls' gym flooded and the floor was ruined, we spent 3 months studying rules of various sports rather than playing them because "it wouldn't be fair to make the boys share their gym."
DeleteSO fun. I could never see as a chid, (I would always "forget"l my glasses,and then lose my contacts) so that put a big damper on sports. I famously took beginning tennis in college, a one-semester course, four times. My most memorable sports events--well, for some reason, it turned out that I am an awesome softball pitcher. This makes no sense, but there you have it. We discovered it when I was playing for my team (called The Spiders from Mars) at WSB-TV in Atlanta. HOWEVER. I cannot catch or throw overhand. So before every game, our coach instructed me to "Pitch, then duck." So the someone else could field the batted ball.
ReplyDeletePitch then duck! Not bad advice!!
DeleteHair - Long, fine, straight and I had bangs but I don't remember being teased about having bangs. Teased for other things but not bangs. I dutifully sat through my weekly pin curls on Saturday night, brush out on Sunday only to arrive at church with limp waves. My mom tried so hard to make my hair curl. She should have known better, her hair wouldn't hold a curl as child either.
ReplyDeleteExcellIng in a sport not just not going to happen. I tried in elementary school but being the last picked for teams was demoralizing. It didn't help that running was painful and I ducked when a ball was thrown at me with any speed. I actually never saw it until too late. Oh well.
OH, Deana, thank goodness you survived. Yes ducking (we played a lot of dodge ball) is a skill I learned early on, too.
DeleteWhat a wonderful piece, Hallie. Obviously, the writer in residence program is so lucky to have you!
ReplyDeleteI was fortunate enough to have sports as a teen - and I loved volleyball and basketball. Although, despite my height, I wasn't great at them. Too much of a day dreamer - I'd space out in the middle of a game. LOL.
Earth to Jenn... You didn't swim?
DeleteI was always clumsy and awkward at any sport I attempted. We didn’t have sports in school, so my attempts always happened in the neighborhood or in summer recreation programs. I doubt I would have been good at anything. I did love to watch figure skating and ski jumping on TV. I even took figure skating lessons when I was in my twenties. I “flunked” the lesson on falling correctly. The teacher tried to help each individual in the class to perfect their “falls”. She gave up on me.I have never felt confident on the ice, and I never skated more than an arm’s length away from the wall! But I still like watching it!
ReplyDeleteI suppose I could say that my sport is walking!! It’s non-competitive, I don’t need special equipment, just a good pair of walking shoes!
And I love it.
DebRo
And walking is always one of the first things they advise for healthy aging!
DeleteI remember holding my breath and walking fast in the locker room. All mirrors were blocked by girls ratting their hair and spraying. BIG cans of hairspray. I was athletic and enjoyed it but there were no opportunities. In junior high we had intramural sports and our homeroom won one championship. I remember some of us asking the gym teachers if we could jump the hurdles too and they were aghast at the idea. Literally told us that if one of us got hurt our parents would sue the school board. Evidently it was okay if the boys broke their necks! Never mind that Babe Didrikson grew up down the road in Port Arthur. Actually I think she wasn't allowed to jump hurdles either. In junior high I also wanted to either work for the Forest Service or the National Park Service but guess what? Females weren't allowed. Rather than fight the system and beat my head against a wall I totally gave up on sports and outdoor careers.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to be a fire fighter from the time I was 6 years old.
DeleteWhen I was in high school everyone took a survey that would suggest which careers you were best suited for or that fit your "profile" of answers to questions about your interests and strengths. Mine indicated I would be a great match for the Forest Service! Go figure, but of course "no girls allowed."
The power of the bubble 'do; making a sixth grader look like she's 30. Not just you, Hallie, I've seen many other pictures that make youthful teens look astonishingly mature with that terrible mistake. I assume, like many things, there were a few models that looked amazing with their hair done that way, and it got pushed onto everyone else. (I speak as a woman who spent her high school years wearing Hamill hair.)
ReplyDeleteI also missed out on the benefits of title IX. In argyle Central School, where I spent grades 5 through 9, the only sport for girls was field hockey. I was not gifted at field hockey, nor at the popular gym game volleyball, which, as someone with pretty severe depth perception, was just a series of balls hitting my face.
I didn't discover I enjoyed running until I was in my 30s, and I was only able to do it for a few years, as pregnancy and plantar fasciitis and eventually traumatic arthritis in my knee got in the way. I look at my daughters, who got a full variety of sports experiences when they were in school, and for whom exercise isn't a chore, but a joy. I missed that.
You can still run. Running in a lane in a pool is essentially non-impact, and it burns a lot of calories! Exercise can actually lessen the effect's of arthritis ! Im willing to bet you don't have arthritis, but did have an acute knee injury. General practitioner doctors say everything is age or arthritis, and almost always are wrong. If you want to find out what is really wrong with your knee, see a sports medicine doctor at a major medical center.
DeleteI am your age and run thirty to forty miles a week.
Hallie, this is a great post about sports. The partner of the Governor of California was and still is very active in sports. I think she was on the Soccer (football in Europe) team at Stanford.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up, I knew many women in sports. At Uni, my college boyfriend's sister was on the Rugby team. More women's sports team at Uni than in high school. Because of budget cuts (thank you Prop.13), there was only the football team and basketball teams (all men) at my public high school and maybe there was one women's softball team.
Speaking of the opportunity to learn, I really wanted to learn the French language in the 4th grade after a teacher from France visited our class. I was always fascinated by languages and still am. Already knew English as my first language then Sign Languages. At that time I thought Signed Exact English was baby signs because that was what the teachers signed in the classrooms until I was in the 4th grade. I also thought ASL was Adult Sign Language because I saw Deaf adults signing in that language. Now i know it is called American Sign Language.
Back to my wanting to learn the French language, an adult told me that I had to learn the English language first before I could learn the French language (eye roll here). Years later, I met my college boyfriend who started learning the French language in Kindergarten, which is a tradition in his family. His 2x great grandmother was French and she was one of the first women graduates from the University at Berkeley.
Finally started learning Spanish and French in high school. The language teachers were surprised by how well I did in these classes (top grades). My best subjects were English, languages, and history while my weak subjects were math and science.
Question: Is it unusual for American children to learn a foreign language before high school? I read somewhere that European children learn languages by the time they are ten years old?
Diana
It's very unusual, Diana, although in California we had poorly taught Spanish fifth grade through eighth. Thing is, people lose the ability to effortlessly pick up a language with native fluency at about adolescence. By the time kids get to high school it's too late for most. Our schools have it backward!
DeleteMy 8 yr. old grandson in Delaware has been studying Spanish since kindergarten! He can converse simply with people he meets around town. His math lessons have all been in Spanish.
DeleteEdith, I remember there was something on the ballot about English only and the voters voted for English only in California. Then on my first trip to Canada, I was amazed to see English and French on shampoo bottles. When I was in Vancouver for LCC 2019, I bought a tea package in both English and French!
DeleteJudy, that is wonderful news about your grandson. I remember there are Spanish immersion schools and I think they are private schools. A neighbor teaches at a Spanish immersion school. I also recall there are French and German immersion schools.
Diana
Rhys: I have always been a tennis player until a damaged disc made me have to give it up. I played for my school and college and in leagues But I’m highly competitive and at a girls school every sport was offered us. .it turned out I was good at high jump! Who knew? I could just run at the bar and somehow get over it
ReplyDeleteI also played netball, hockey cricket. Did not enjoy these last two.
What a wonderful piece, Hallie! I am so looking forward to more! I think I just missed out on the bubble--thank goodness. By the time I was in middle school I wanted to look like Jane Asher!
ReplyDeleteI despised PE and was not good at any kind of sport, so I don't even remember what sports girls had in our schools. I was very outdoorsy, however, and would spend all my days outside, examining and collecting things. I did end up in science in college, so I suppose that pointed me in one direction. But I also sketched and wrote poetry, both of which I could have been better at with more encouragement.
We had delightful gym teachers in junior high and high school. Although we did sports seasonally, we also had some interesting and fun study sections with modern dance, fencing and strength building skills. I have very fond memories of high school gym classes.
ReplyDeleteHallie, that's such a terrific story, and proves the soundness of your advice to never throw away anything you've written!! Coming up in the 50's and 60's the opportunities to participate in organized sports were non-existent, but I grew up in a great neighborhood where kids of all ages (and abilities) played together. It was actually that way during recess at school, too. Whoever was outside was welcome to join whatever game was going on. At home, in addition to playing softball, touch football, foursquare, etc., Dad had put up a basketball hoop on our garage, and I enjoyed shooting baskets. We also had a BIG rope that could be tied to the garage door handle for jump rope, and a favorite memory is Mom coming out to turn the rope for us, and even jump. We had physical fitness tests in 5th grade, and I was the fastest runner in both classes, girls and boys included. Basically, I loved moving, and took every opportunity to run, jump, play actively. In my 20s I played racquetball five times a week and was in great shape. Now, at 73, that's changed dramatically. However, I'm in physical therapy four times a week and have high hopes I'll regain some of my earlier fitness.
ReplyDeleteThe above is from Lynda.
Delete