Helmet Head at the Bates Motel

I don’t want to wind up looking like Norman Bates’s mother.

You remember that scene.  The one in “Psycho” where Vera Miles has found her way into the basement of the house on the hill behind the Bates Motel.  Vera sees Mrs. Bates sitting there with her back to the door. 

“Mrs. Bates?” says Vera tentatively, thinking she’s looking at the back of just about anyone’s mom – at least anyone’s mom who hangs out in a fruit cellar, facing the corner in a rocking chair, and who doesn't turn around at the sound of someone coming into the room. 

No answer.  So Vera reaches for her.  Just to get her attention.  You remember. 

Then, when the chair swivels, shrieking music and horror of horrors!  Mrs. Bates has lost her youthful glow!

That’s kind of what happened to a person I admire – Connie Schultz.  She’s a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and cool person.  She wrote recently about racing through the airport not realizing a young man was trying to catch up to her.  When he finally did reach for her, she turned to meet his startled expression.

“Oh!” he said.  “I thought you were someone else.  You look younger from behind.”

OK.  Less dramatic than the revelation in “Psycho,” but profound nonetheless.

Connie wrote about it in her blog in which she was musing about turning 56 and choosing not to cut her hair.  She said even though she’s middle aged (planning to live to 112, I guess) she didn’t get the “helmet head” memo.

Now gosh darn it that hurt my feelings!  Especially coming from someone whom, in my happiest flights of fancy, I emulate.

It wouldn't have bothered me a month ago, when my hair was still long, as it had been for years and decades. 

But now I've cut it.  Really short!  OMG.  Do I have helmet head?

I've always had “good hair.”  Thick and healthy.  Shiny.  In fact, I was kind of known for my hair.  I’m sure I was invested in it.  If all else failed, I could trump you with my hair.  In some ways, I sort of was my hair.

But I had to acknowledge the incongruity between my hair and my face was becoming more and more pronounced.  I had the sense a couple of times that I was in the midst of a Connie Schultz moment.  But when I swiveled in my rocker, the young man standing there, whose eyes met mine with a question and a wary realization, was at least courteous enough to keep his trap shut.

Still, there’s no denying it.  Once you have read the “you’re getting older” memo, you cannot unread it.

Oh you can walk around oblivious to its arrival like the clueless ones who exit public restrooms trailing stretches of telltale TP. 

Or maybe you can frown and squint at the envelop front and back – this can’t be for me!? 

Some of us walk around like Cher with big hair and big lips, in a sort of “age-related anorexia,” only recognizing the lipstick, and not the pig we have smeared it on.

True, I can’t say I got the memo and cheerily skipped off to the salon for a snip. 

No.  I stewed and stressed and anguished over who I’d be and how I’d look so many times over the years that I could easily have been mistaken for immature, if not young.

Then, right in the middle of the throes of the contortions of the pangs of the anxiety and indecision, I saw a post on that great dispenser of wisdom: Facebook.  It said, “Quit over-thinking, Carolyn.  It ruins everything.” 

All right, Facebook didn't really use my name, but I felt like it was directed at me, a grown woman thrashing around like an infant over a HAIRCUT!

So I did it.  I took the pixie plunge.

And I must say, I look good.  Maybe even better.  Instant face lift.  Grown up, and kind of glam. 

I danced the happy dance in front of the mirror as I made my adjustment to the transformation.  Oh yeah!  I’m rockin’ the short hair.  I’m Sharon Stone.  I’m Helen Mirren at the Oscars.  I’m… a helmet head!? 

I could be deflated.  But no ~ at least I’m not Norman Bates’s mother. 

Stumble Upon This

So I’m now a member of StumbleUpon.  It’s an internet sort of search mechanism that suggests sites I might never find no matter how much time I spend hunched over the keyboard squinting at the screen.  I can’t think what interest I professed that led me to stumbling upon Men’s Health Magazine.  But after a quick perusal of its cover, I felt compelled to compare it with those of Women’s Health Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Ms., and AARP.  Get ready. 

Guess who put a teaser called, “When Flirting Goes Too Far” on the cover of their magazine?  If you had to choose among those publications just mentioned, wouldn’t you peg that topic to be in the women’s magazines?  I would have, meaning I suppose that I’m still narrow-minded and sexist in spite of my overt claims of feminism.   

When did a man (my husband excepted, of course) ever care if flirting went too far?  But even in our new world where men do worry about the consequences of an indiscretion, I would have been less surprised to see it on Men’s Health than I was to find it on AARP.  Yup.  There it is in boldface type.  The senior set is concerned with flirting games. 

Natural curiosity leads a person into the depths of AARP’s webpages in search of what, in fact, can go wrong when flirting does go too far, since it’s been such a long time since a person allowed herself to flirt.  One has to navigate past image after image of older folks who could be the target of an ill-placed flirt.  Folks like Jim Carrey, Meg Ryan, and Heather Locklear.  All now 50 and beyond.   

What could possibly go wrong in a flirtation with one of those senior citizens?  OK, Sharon Stone.  She does seem dangerous somehow.  Best not flirt with her, Dad.  It could go too far.  You could find yourself… entangled.  

Even now, you might expect a headline like “Sex Survey Exclusive!” to adorn the cover of Cosmopolitan, right?  Helen Gurley Brown never did have any compunction.  Yet there it is on Men’s Health!  It looks like the men actually surveyed 1900 women, and have learned how to “find her ‘on’ button.”  Yikes.   

AARP boasts some hard-hitting sort of must-know stories.  In its section on Relationships, for example, one can get advice for when “Sleep Apnea Ruins Your Sex Life” or “ When Mom has a New Boyfriend.”  Ewww.  

Men’s Health touts articles formerly the sole purview of the “ladies’” periodicals – subjects like  “Power Diet,” and “Lean Belly Prescription,” even “No Sweat Cardio.”  And “Back Pain Primer?”  Nope.  Not AARP.  Nowadays even men in the 18 to 35 demographic admit to being vulnerable and frail.  

Conversely, back in the day when you saw a headline like “Sculpt Flat Abs!” or “Love v. Lust,” you’d ascribe them to a men’s magazine, wouldn’t you?  Wouldn’t you??  Not anymore!  Look to Women’s Health for those must-reads. 

Notably, in my tiny sampling and unscientific review, no mention of money on the covers of Women’s Health, Cosmopolitan, or even Ms. (though Ms. has every other serious issue up front).  AARP and Men’s Health, both mention it.  The most banal foray into finances might be “Your Money Plan:  How to make it.  Where to spend it.”  At work and on the mortgage come to mind.  But I confess, I didn’t read the breaking news. 

OK.  I know.  I’m reverting.  I’m revealing.  TMI.  It just seems the blurring of the lines between young and old, male and female territories produces oddities.  I know that’s good.  It’s what we wanted, right?  We didn’t want the stereotypes in any camp.  Still it seems kind of funny.  To me anyway.  Just showing how deeply the gender roles are ingrained, I suppose. 

Part of it could be the idea that no matter how evolved the men are, the “Secrets of Strength and Calm” offered in the men’s magazine really do remain with the women.  It’s our cosmic destiny.  We provide the ohm in our relationships and to the world.  It’s the natural order.  Men are strangers in that celestial land of serenity.  If we women offer it up without a mystery attached, what’s left to surrender? 

Up next, StumbleUpon’s latest suggestion for my exploration: “Miley Cyrus Inadvertently Slights Jesus on Twitter.”  Now that goes too far!