STRANGER THAN FICTION: NO SENSE SPLITTING HAIRS OVER TODAY'S STYLES

Yes, this is my third column picture in a month.

No, I'm not getting vain.

The first one didn't look like me -- at least that's what everyone said. I was wearing a striped T-shirt and trying to look seductive, but the expression turned into more of a smirk. As if that weren't enough, a friend of mine asked if the striped shirt was meant to signify I felt trapped, perhaps imprisoned.

My friends enjoy the time spent with their therapists.

Her comment, along with several others, was enough to jolt me into a new picture change. The next one was better -- although taken last year. I looked more relaxed, wore a little nicer shirt, smiled a bit wider.

Then, just this week, management decided to promote our columns on the front page. Today, there I am, in living color.

I've got a double chin, shiny nose, and, worst of all, LOUSY HAIR (see photo).

To a woman, hair is everything. You can have a fit body, beautiful complexion and great personality, but with limp, skanky hair, you're nothing in our world.

Women will go to great lengths to improve on whatever God gave them. My mother used to spend vast sums covering the gray and adding some life to her limp strands, which suffered a vitamin deficiency after five kids.

Even I spent $15 on a bottle of shampoo and $20 on some conditioner once so my hair wouldn't feel like straw. It was easier to spend that kind of money when I was single -- it was like investing in the husband market. Now a $15 bottle of shampoo would have to come with gold medallions for me to buy it.

Anyway, soft, supple hair is nothing without the right cut, and that's where one's stylist comes in.

I'm not ashamed to say it -- when it comes to beauty salons, I'm no better than a low-down street walker. I'll rush into a stylist's chair one day, forgetting him the next, always in search of that perfect pair of scissors and an eye for beauty.

It wasn't always like this. Back in my hometown, there was a man unlike any I've ever met. I walked into his salon one day, sat down in his chair, told him to do anything he wanted ... and ended up with the ideal hairstyle. We met again and again, month after month, trim after trim.

Then he was gone, mysteriously disappearing into the night.

Sure, I picked myself up and tried stylists again, one after the other, but none of them could satisfy my lust for perfect hair like HE could. Then tragedy struck again.

You know those women's magazines that suggest you take a picture of your desired hairstyle to the salon? Bullhockey. Stylists have combs, not wands, and you'll never, EVER come out looking like the picture because you aren't a movie star or professional model.

I found that out just this week (see photo again) when I was flipping through "Entertainment Weekly" and discovered a picture of Sigourney Weaver. She had short, kicky hair, hair that said, "I'm a professional actress, and I paid $300 for this color and style."

I wanted that hair.

Come to find out, I'm not Sigourney Weaver, and my hairstylist isn't David Copperfield. She cut my hair, my hair dried, my hair shrunk. I don't have short, kicky hair with life and body. I have "Woman Who Just Got Out Of The Marine Corps" hair.

And now this cut will be immortalized in the newspaper every Saturday for the rest of my career at the Southeast Missourian. The Other Half, that silver-tongued devil, said the style "wasn't THAT bad."

Liar.

~Heidi Nieland is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.