Queen for a Day

I came home from teaching, threw my bag in the corner, and shouted, "If I were Queen of the World for a Day, I would ban all straightening rods, straightening creams, and straightening blow-outs for all time!"

Keith looked at me, nodded, and immediately left the house.

Pitiful, isn't it? What sort of person chooses hair straightening as the thing that must be eradicated to make the world better? Not hunger? AIDS? Malaria? The Tea Party? Glenn Beck? And really, truly, I'd get rid of all those first, if I were Queen. Absolutely. It's a promise.

But I've had it with straight hair. For years now, I look out at my classes, and all the white women look absolutely identical. Same shoulder-length straight hair, seat after seat after seat. Absolutely utterly the same. It's weird. Creepy. Downright Orwellian. When I first started teaching, lo, these many decades ago, I had trouble tellling the white guys apart. They all wore baseball caps and sat in the back row and threw down their pens whenever I used words like "patriarchy" or "gender" or "femininity". The women, however,  were easy--some had short hair, some long, some in between, in a wide range from downright nappy to board straight. Jennifer stood out from Jessica; Alison could never be mistaken for Emma. Now the women in my classes look like they've all been cloned by some alien mastermind out to take over American universities. There's the occasional rebel with a variety of piercings and tattooss--but even she sports that same damned straight hair. I can't stand it. How am I supposed to tell Taylor from Dakota from Hannah from Jordan from Katelyn from Michelle from Holly? And good lord, what's wrong with a little curl? the occasional spontaneous bounce? even, God forbid, a wee bit of frizz now and then?