Book review
BAD HAIR
by James Innes-Smith & Henrietta Webb
Bloomsbury, 106 pp.
When we think of a book, even a picture book, it usually has words to describe the pictures. But not every text is made up of words. Many texts in our everyday world are devoid of words – the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the photos in our newspapers – so why not publish a picture book that’s word-free?
James Innes-Smith and Henrietta Webb seem to have struck on the perfect concept for their picture book, bad hair. It’s a tour through the worst haircuts of the ’70s – the craziest, spookiest or just plain goofiest dos ever styled. Whether it’s the boys growing their facial hair until it meets the hair on their head or the girls turning their hair into organic hats, the book is a thorough examination of follicle idiocy.
The first time through bad hair it’s impossible not to laugh out loud. Some haircuts border on the mythical – one of the male models actually looks like a hedgehog caught sleeping on his wood shavings, and every single female looks like a reject from a ’50s sci-fi movie (too unbelievable to do battle with Flash Gordon and too frightening to woo Buck Rodgers).
The second time through, however, the pictures reveal something less than humorous. This book isn’t really an attack on bad hair and the geeks who were foolish enough to sport horrendous hair-dos. Instead, it’s a celebration of bad taste and the popular culture that turns everything that’s shabby – like T.J. Hooker and the Care Bears – into gold.
This book is oblivious to the fact that there is something wrong with a society that produces the leisure and riches that make this kind of self-indulgence possible. This is a celebration of the rich few, a celebration of hedonistic self-expression, a celebration of hair products and bad clothes. The coifs in this book could never be maintained by the average Joe. During their decade, these hair cuts were the height of fashion worn by only the cool few, not the uncool many.
But bad hair is offering another, slightly less troubling disservice to its readers (or, rather, viewers): it is practically begging moronic retro-boys and retro-girls to revive the tacky, hair product-heavy, missile-defense-shield style hair-dos of the past.
So if you see a boy who looks like he’s stolen a David Cassidy wig or a girl whose forehead-covering braids have holes for her eyes to peek through, you’ll know you’ve seen someone who has taken Innes-Smith and Webb’s book way too seriously. The only thing for it is to follow them home, knock them over the head (if you can penetrate the force field of their hair spray) and steal bad hair from the top of their toilet.
Think of it as a humanitarian act, an act of mercy, an act of protest. Stamp out bad hair!
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