Ladyfinger-Do (Dah-Do): The Sovereignty of Hair

About author / Josh Gunn

Bachelor chef; southern cooking; mixologist; university professor. Josh's recipes will delight (and sometimes terrify) you.

Independence Day looms, which mean it's almost time for outdoor grilling, gathering with friends and family, and lighting fire crackers. And when I think of firecrackers, I think of 80s hairdos from middle and high school. I remember for at least a good five years in my hometown of Snellville, Georgia, the young ladies who I grew up with frequently had "big hair," and in the spot right above the forehead their bangs were cut to be blown-dry into a sort of poofy cushion-crater. The forehead hair-poof always seemed to me like someone stuck a little firecracker in the middle and lit it, you know, like a little red Ladyfinger firecracker: ssssssssssssss . . . . POP!

As I reminisced about the neglected connection between July 4th and 80s hair, I began to wonder: how in the heck did they achieve this gravity-defying hair-poof crater? Such an extravagance was obviously not created with a firecracker. We children were reared by watching Michael Jackson, whose "freak accident" while filming a commercial for Pepsi in 1984 taught us that hair is, in fact, flammable (so flammable that the Jheri Curl quickly went out of fashion after Jackson's flaming head fiasco). So how did hair achieve its independence from taste? What slipped 80s hair from the surly bonds of gravity?

I researched the Tubes and discovered the answer to my question: Aqua Net. I remember growing up and staying with my grandmother, and she had a big pink can of this stuff in her bathroom. Aqua Net is a hairspray that is made of "aqua" (water) and "net" (polyvinylpyrrolidine), which were borne aloft by the solvent that was eventually banned for zapping the ozone layer (CFC's). This is why you can say to a child of the 80s, "Yo! Your big hair is gonna give me skin cancer one day!" Basically, this stuff is liquid glue: it goes on your hair all wet, but with time hardens into a egg-shell consistency.

Scouring the Tubes I discovered the forehead-firecracker look is achieved by aiming the barrel of a hairdryer into one, central target, thereby creating a crater with rapid bullets of hot air, while one uses the free hand to smooth out and poof up the sides of the crater. One is warned, however, to do the fire-cracker-poof last, as the rest of one's hair should be teased to achieve maximum volume around it (think "lion mane" here).

In general, liberating the hair from gravity requires one to spray Aqua Net on damp hair. Then, you pull a clump of hair taught while your freehand "rattails" the hair with a comb (basically, combing down parts of the hair while pulling other parts tight and out from the scalp) to achieve more of a Robert Smith look (the lead signer of The Cure). Alternately, for a poofier look you blow dry Aqua Netted hair with a curvy brush "up-and-out." Only with a significant amount of time and hairspray will you achieve hair independence. And, I should warn, your hair will require two or three shampoo sessions to remove the gravity-defying polymer and return your hair to the planet Earth.

Now, you might be asking: what does big 80s hair have to do with the forth of July? Nothing, really, it's just that firecrackers remind me that forehead hair-crater look. Here's a good recipe for potato salad:

Serves/Makes: 6

• 6 medium red potatoes
• 2 hard boiled eggs (more if desired)
• 1/2 cup chopped green onions
• 1 medium green bell pepper, chopped
• 3 ribs celery, finely chopped (more if desired)
• 1 large dill pickle, cubed
• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 1 tablespoon Creole mustard
• 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1 dash Cajun/Creole seasoning (like Slap Ya Mamma)
• 1 dash hot sauce (like Tabasco)