ANN’S FASHION FORTUNES By Ann Rosenquist Fee
Breaking cycles, smelling good DEAR ANN: Why don’t curling iron barrels have clamps anymore? I bought one online and never thought to specify that I wanted a clamp. It arrived and it’s just the barrel. But it doesn’t look broken. But I can’t use it. Why is this happening to me? DEAR READER: I made this same mistake when I recently ordered a travel-sized curling iron. Not sure why I thought I needed to travel with something smaller than a full-sized curling iron, or what I pictured, but what I got was a tiny barrel with no clamp. I figured it was a professional-vs.-amateur thing, like how salons use marcel irons that aren’t spring-loaded so the stylist has to skillfully, manually hold the clamp closed. I definitely feel like a professional where my hair is concerned so I did not shy away. I fired up my new pro tool, pinched my split ends and wrapped my bangs around the barrel holding the hair as close as I could without getting burned. When I let go and shook out my steaming bang to see the results, I realized this must be the kind of curling iron everybody’s using now because my hair had that same wavy-except-the-very-end shape as every other white woman in the modern world. I think the technical term is “beachy waves.” I don’t know what makes them beachy. A friend suggested it was because it’s what it looks like when you’re at the beach and your perm gets wet and stretches out. This makes sense if you have a history of 1980s-era spiral perms, which I do, and frankly don’t wish to revisit. My suggestion is that you find a young person who’s free of the emotional baggage you’re clearly carrying around, re-home your new curling iron, and altogether let go of spending your grooming time trying to make your hair
the exact opposite of whatever it actually naturally wants to be. DEAR ANN: The first thing I noticed at my first post-COVID gathering was how much I’d missed the fragrance of people in social settings. Not like walking up to people and smelling them, which is not a thing I do. I just mean the experience of getting a waft of a friend’s perfume or hair
40 • SEPTEMBER 2021 • MANKATO MAGAZINE
Must be born on or after this date in 1980 to actually enjoy beachy waves.
product and saying, “Oh wow, you smell amazing,” and then finding out what they’re wearing and wherever else the conversation goes from there. Now that I know how fundamental this was to my enjoyment of social settings, how am I going to cope if we have another lockdown? D E A R R E A D E R : The CDC keeps saying we’re not looking at
