My Hair Stylist Is Jewish, I Am a Shiksa, and We Are Sisters

By Shannon Callahan

Since the beginning of time, women have gone to great lengths to groom their most prized asset: their hair. Shannon Callahan, whose flaxen hair transformed into an unruly mop during puberty, was left to fend for herself during an era when girls dutifully mimicked the Farrah Fawcett hairstyle in order to receive much-needed acceptance in the halls of school.

Callahan begins by sharing how she embarked on a battle against the forces of a wild mane, beginning with adolescence when she avoided mirrors like the plague, bent her frizzy locks into submission with a blow dryer, and faked confidence in front of boys. As she matured and bypassed the blow dryer for rollers, Callahan provides a glimpse into the insecurities that accompanied her foray into womanhood that included comparing her body with famous models and attempting communication with the opposite sex. But as Callahan poignantly describes, it was only after a series of challenging events that she was finally led to a Jewish hair stylist and a new beginning.

My Hair Stylist Is Jewish, I Am a Shiksa, and We Are Sisters shares the touching yet amusing story of a womans struggle with her hair through a lifetime of styling challenges as she transforms from an insecure girl to a confident woman who happily accepts herself just as she is.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jul 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781480809352

Shannon Callahan

Shannon Callahan is a graduate of Northwestern University, certified teacher, published poet, stay-at-home mom, team partner to build a microbiological water filter for third-world countries and disaster relief, and marketing consultant for Keratin Complex Treatment by Coppola.

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Copyright © 2014 Shannon Callahan .

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Archway Publishing

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-0934-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-0936-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-0935-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014912572

Archway Publishing rev. date: 07/10/2014

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Round to Oblong Follicles

Hair, Hair Everywhere

Tame the Mane

Too and Fro

North or South Erst We Go Galley West

Male, Female, Past, and Present in Detail

How to Hide in a Pseudonym. Is It for Me, or Is It for Him?

Malapropism—What did You Say?

A Propensity for Mimicry

Don’t Bring in the Clowns

The Chop Job and Burials for Burdens

Games We No Longer Play

Benefit of Foreign Tongues

The Nose Knows

Communication and Cortisol

Peers and Beers

The Gift of Friends

Changing Assets

Catching up with Current Trends

What the Unseen World Sees

About the Author

For

Daddy Father God, my husband, son, and daughter, Mom, Dad, Bruce, Mary, Queenie, and Beth for encouraging me, all of my dearest beloved friends, and Paula, my little Jewish sister.

Among those whom I like or admire I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can; all of them make me laugh.

—W. H. Auden

Preface

Last night my husband and I had dinner with a few close friends at my thin friend’s house. She made me a birthday dinner. Unfortunately, her husband was wearing Armani Code (which is dangerously attractive to females), so I had to rein in the olfactory system and redirect it to the smell of the homemade French onion soup. Trying to avoid that smell is like a trip in the forest hunting for truffles with your best pig’s nose, and he has the treasure under his feet at the bottom of a tree.

Speaking of pigs, in addition to many canines and three cats, my thin friend has a potbellied pig named George. George’s sole interest is eating. He also searches for warm spots around the house and is given to burrowing under a blanket on their living room couch.

When my thin friend’s husband spotted him there, he called us in to see what George can do. George had eaten the fabric fringe on a pillow, and his stomach was distended. While completely covered under the blanket, George’s little dirigible-shaped body bulged under the soft fleece. My friend’s husband began to touch him, and he emitted a range of sounds from chortles to grunts, snorts to squeals on the musical range of a porcine scale. He was playing George like a bagpipe, and my friend Suzanne recorded this historical moment.

In the soft, warm glow of candlelight, sipping on onion soup, my friend Scott and his wife, Suzanne, began to argue the case for the importance of using my real name, rather than a pseudonym, for my book. Like two border collies, Scott moved my husband from resolute rejection to consideration of the cogent argument Scott put forth on my behalf. Suzanne moved in and steered him to total acquiescence and affirmation sealed with a hug and a handshake. (This happened after the manuscript was completed and due to be sent to the publisher.) What a difference a dinner makes.

Introduction

shik·sa \shik-s 54223.png \ n: a non-Jewish girl or woman

Round to Oblong Follicles

After that strange passage through the puberty, hair became a very big issue. Those were the days of Charlie’s Angels, and Farrah Fawcett led the charge for what blondes should look like if they were culturally accepted. What had started out as silky golden hair morphed into the worst asset of what all women hold dear. Yes, my friend, it did not happen overnight, but by the time I had left Catholic grade school to enter into the hallowed halls of one of the city’s most prestigious schools, an ongoing battle occurred as I watched the popular girls with shiny, straight hair drawing tremendous influence with our peers and the elusive male sex.

The ectomorph body that God had given me was changing daily. Mom had never mentioned a word about menstruation, so I found myself unable to grasp the tenor of the classroom, as a cryptic film with unknown language elicited peals of laughter from my classmates. Ours was a cliquey class, and never fitting in to any of the rigid pecking order, isolated, I remained confused at all of the content of the cozy film displaying verbal exchanges in confidence between two pubescent females. Mom was unapproachable and peers floated in the higher realms of social behavior, so I was left alone on a flimsy raft barreling down the white waters of adolescence.

The day of entrance into womanhood was not a ceremonious occasion. Dressed in tennis whites and standing at the transit station with my younger brother, some confusing babble commenced from the mouth of a young African American woman.

With racquet in hand and one foot on the bench while we waited to be transported to our tennis lesson, I stood as she exclaimed, "Yo