So Alison posted a challenge of sorts – to share hairstyles of days gone by. While this particular photo doesn’t capture the essence of what was going in the my head in the early eighties, it definitely conjures up memories for me:

• An almost Sapphic obsession with Belinda Carlisle. Do you remember when Belinda quit the Go-Go’s and started her own career? Do you remember when she cut one side of her hair shorter than the other? Do you remember legions of young woman walking around with their head tilted to one side as if weighted down by the longer hair?
• Note the helmet like quality of the hair. It looks like I could pop that hair on and off on a whim. To achieve this lego hair, I probably popped a hole or two into the ozone layer with my heavy consumption of French Formula hairspray. The.best.hairspray.evah.
• Sore neck. See above entry for the longer hair on one side thing. All that holding my head to one side for hours on end left me with a huge kink in my neck.
• Pimples. See above entry for heavy use of hairspray. All that hairspray on my bangs in particular left me with tons of pimples on my forehead. This led to an inappropriate use of foundation clearly not matched to my skin tone, but that is an entry for another day.
• Party in the front, business in the back. Because I could only see the front of my head, I assumed the rest of world could only see me that way too. I spent countless hours on the front of my hair, but don’t remember caring a whole lot about the back of my head, and definitely did not waste a drop of French Formula on something people couldn’t see!

It is probably because of this “Belinda Syndrome” that I now use hairspray so sparingly and have a perfectly balanced haircut.

I do have “Heaven is a Place on Earth" on my MP3 though……