Fancier and fashionable isn’t always happier

Published 8:58 am Monday, April 27, 2009

Today my bangs looked like I used the “A Little Dab’ll Do Ya!” Brylcreem that was popular back in the olden days. If any youngsters are reading my column Brylcreem was the product that you now know as paste or gel but very greasy. The reason my hair looked so strange was because of a bump and scrape on the head that I somewhat remember receiving. It hurt and I wanted it to heal fast so I put on the old standby for healing. That old standby is bag balm. You youngsters will have to ask another old person like me about bag balm. It was especially useful if you had dairy cows.

Bag Balm is great stuff for humans too if you have a scrape or a cut. Forget the name and think lanolin and soft.

However the problem with Bag Balm on the scalp and on the hair is that it doesn’t wash out easily. I didn’t know that as I hadn’t had a reason to rub my hair in it before. So because of the “doesn’t wash out easily” uniqueness of the product my hair looked like Squiggy’s hair in LuVerne and Shirley.

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I fully expected to be looked at strangely. I fully expected some people to veer away from me thinking that I never wash my hair. It is what we do. We judge people on their appearance.

Recently Susan Boyle appeared on Britain’s Got Talent and made news around the world. What was so amazing besides the fact that she absolutely has the most amazing voice is the fact that people expected her to fail because of her looks and her personality. Susan is a little heavy, has a exuberant personality and was not a polished person. It appeared no one accepted her until she opened her mouth and started to sing. Once it was established that this woman had this awesome voice the audience and the judges sang her praises. The expectation was that no one that looked like Susan could possibly have talent.

Every once in a while I watch “Wife Swap.” I find it to be an intriguing program in personalities. Two women exchange lives and families for two weeks hoping to bring something different to their new family. The show chooses families whose personalities are very different and many times very strange. One of the episodes that was broadcast recently traded the lives of a woman that was very plain and lived in a cabin with no running water and electricity. They had very few clothes and the ones they bought were strictly from thrift stores. This woman and her husband had two children and very little money. Their lifestyle was by choice. They were happy.

The other family was very well-to-do. This family dressed perfectly and appeared to have all the advantages in life.

It appeared to me that the differences in these families extended well beyond their monetary means. It was very evident that the woman with all the advantages and all the plastic surgery to make her perfect was a very unhappy woman.

The family that chose to lead a simple lifestyle did not dress well, did not have the best haircuts or hair styles and according to the well to do woman, smelled. But this simple family was nice. You could not help but like them. Their children were important to them and people were important to them.

I spent a weekend in the cities recently. It sometimes is an alien place to me because I spend the majority of time as a country hick from a small town. On leaving a grocery store in the big city a man started talking to me. This man was dressed strange, was a little frumpy and he had bags of groceries. This was at 8:30 in the evening and the store closed at 9:00. He followed me out of the store and asked me what time the store closed. My thoughts were this: He thinks I am alone; he is dressed strange, he has already bought his groceries so why is he asking me what time the store closes? I ignored him. My kind daughter who was ahead of me in the parking lot heard the exchange and came back and answered him.

I was ashamed of myself. I did not answer him out of fear because I had heard so many bad stories of people being accosted near this neighborhood. He looked different and I was afraid.

I am a country bumpkin or country hick. I am proud of that. That is not derogatory. I suppose you could call Susan Boyle a country hick and you definitely could call the family in Wife Swap country hicks.

Country hicks and country bumpkins are flat-out nice people who get judged because they are not fashionable, are not trying to be something they are not. They are being who they are.

How has the concept happened that if we don’t dress appropriately and our hair is not the latest style that we are dismissed as being under educated and talentless? Who makes these rules and why do we buy into that classless way of thinking?

How many of us worry about what we wear to church? Should it matter? Or should everyone just be glad that we made it to church no matter what we are wearing?

Wells resident Julie Seedorf’s column appears every Monday. Send e-mail to her at thecolumn@bevcomm.net or visit her blog at www.justalittlefluff.blogspot.com.