Dear God, It's me Denise

When I was a kid, I used to pray to my white, male Lutheran God for two things: 20/20 vision and big hair. My longings were primal, the kind that only middle-schoolers feel with a howl of desire.  Imagine this:  A skinny, pimple-ridden, 13-year-old Polish American girl with 80’s glasses, garage-sale clothes and short, thin, mousy brown hair that I carefully feathered and hair-sprayed, so it stayed perfectly still in its flat grandeur.  Every night the prayer was the same: 

Dear God: Please make me have 20/20 vision and big hair. 

Every night. I wanted nothing more than to ditch my large plastic frames and emerge with thick, wavy Pantene locks that could be teased to hairspray heights.   Every morning as my eyes fluttered open, I realized that God had let me down again.  As I looked in the mirror, all I could see was a blurry flat-haired teen.  

Come on, God!  I am nowhere close to looking like Daisy Duke or Princess Diana. (Somehow these two cultural icons were the same in my middle-school mind. I wonder if they have ever been in the same sentence before.)   My disappointment with God was real.  

Here’s the funny thing:  Nearly 22 years later, my 20/20 vision dream came true with Lasik surgery. I no longer need glasses or contacts.  God heard my dream; I just needed to be patient.  

80's feathered hair and frames. The frames can be seen on baristas in our current era. Note also my bro's classic bowl cut.

So, with this same logic, certainly some brilliant scientist out there is concocting a pill to shift the DNA structure as hair grows.  Imagine popping a pill for thick, full locks. And while we are dreaming, wouldn’t it be cool if you could take a pill for caramel-colored hair or jet-black hair?  Or curly texture, wavy texture, or straight texture?    Alas, God has refused to respond to my hair request. For 40 years.   Allow that disappointment to sink in.

For those out there who are saying, what about Rogaine? What about red-light therapy? What about finasteride?  God certainly shows up in those medical advancements, right?  OK, I’ll throw God a bone.  While they work in limited ways, none of these options fundamentally change my hair DNA.   I am DNA destined for fine, thin hair.  Instead of a thick braid down my back, I carry a different braid: One strand of sadness, one of envy, and one of rage.  The rage is reserved for God.  

As a sidenote, there is an extra layer of betrayal here.  I’m somewhat pissed at God because my dorky 80’s frames are now cool. Go into any hip coffee shop today and see tattooed baristas sporting 80’s frames, even the exact one that caused me so much pain in the actual 80’s.  This feels like a possible plot line for a time-traveling tragic comedy.