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

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? DEAR READER: The CDC keeps saying we’re not looking at

another lockdown, but you can’t be too sure, so I suggest you start researching makeup subscription services. I tried one myself last year and canceled after I found I wasn’t really using any of the high-end sample-sized cleansers, serums, shadows, etc. they were sending me every month. But now I regret that, because upon reading your question, I realize the value in receiving products that are perfectly good but don’t work for you is that it’s as close as you can get to socializing with people who smell nice. Start researching and consider the $12-or-more per month like an insurance premium, protecting you against olfactorydeprivation-induced despair.

DEAR ANN: I never understood Casual Fridays and now I’m irritated that the concept exists because it’s one more thing we have to deal with about being back in the office post-COVID. Shouldn’t “Casual Friday” be meaningless now, like so many other things post-2020? Why is my employer still making us do it and acting like it’s a perk? DEAR READER: You’ll be delighted to tell your human resources department that Casual Friday is cultural appropriation. Unless you live in Hawaii, where the custom originated in 1962 when the Hawaiian Fashion Guild sent short-sleeved printed dress shirts to every member of the Hawaii Senate, which then passed a resolution recommending the shirts be worn throughout the summer to let "the male populace return to 'aloha attire' for the summer months for the sake of comfort and in support of the 50th state's garment industry.”

This might land you in several hours’ worth of meetings as part of a newly appointed task force charged with revising the office dress code. You won’t get any real work done, but you’ll be able to wear what you want while notdoing it.

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Got a question? Submit it at annrosenquistfee.com (click on Ann’s Fashion Fortunes). Ann Rosenquist Fee is executive director of the Arts Center of Saint Peter and host of Live from the Arts Center, a music and interview show Thursdays 1-2 p.m. on KMSU 89.7FM. Mankato | Amboy | Eagle Lake | Vernon Center | cbfg.net