Fantasy Island Hair

My job is just … beach. – Ken

Painted pebble found at Torcross Beach in Devon, England

Growing up, I wanted to live on an island. It would be tropical, with white-sand beaches and turquoise waves. I would be a marine archaeologist, marine biologist or scuba instructor. However, I couldn’t swim, so I decided instead to be a novelist like Ian Fleming. I imagined him at his home in Jamaica, sipping a rum and Coke while typing away creating James Bond, occasionally gazing out at the Caribbean Sea.

Along with my dreams of living on an island were the images of myself: like Aphrodite emerging from the turquoise waves, I would have long, sun-kissed, beachy hair. Or like the surfer girls in the film Blue Crush, I’d be blonde and wear a bikini and have ripped abs. I couldn’t surf any more than I could swim, but I would look like a goddess standing on the shore.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Eventually I moved to the UK, which is, indeed, an island. So it seems the Universe obliged, but not exactly as I’d hoped. On occasional trips to the sea, I would gaze at the murky waters of the English Channel. Even during the first week of September, it could be 55 degrees Fahrenheit, pouring with rain, and I'd be wrapped in a fleece and wearing wool socks. Clearly, I wasn’t specific enough when I prayed for an island life.

The same is true of my dreams of wavy beach hair, which took 30 years to arrive. I still didn't have a bikini body, but I’ll give the Universe it’s due: it delivered the wavy hair. My waves are short and dark brown, and I didn’t come by them naturally – more chemotherapeutically. But they’re waves nonetheless.

When they arrived, I knew I needed to get my waves salty so they’d look tousled and wild – I needed to swim in a salty sea.

The cure for anything is salt water — sweat, tears, or the sea. — Isak Dinesen

Rubbing Salt in My Wounds

So my husband and I headed to the south coast of England. We stood on the beach at Blackpool Sands in Devon, under a cloudy sky, our cold, pale toes covered in gray shingle. I wore my sensible navy blue one-piece swimsuit, with its tummy-tucking fabric, and watched my feet turn red from the ice-cold water washing over them.

Salt-spraying my waves on a cold English beach

I didn’t have the courage to swim – it was just too cold. We both turned tail and crunched through the shingle back to our towels. We got dressed and hiked back to the warmth of our van. Aphrodite I was not. I wasn’t a brave Blue-Crusher either. Instead, my beachy dreams were crushed under the cold, gray sky of this island I now call home.

Rubbing Salt in My … Hair

Fortunately, back at our campervan with the heat on, I did some surfing (online) and discovered that the secret to beachy waves is not swimming in the sea at all: it’s salt spray. Real sea water can dry out your hair and cause split ends. So I went to the drug store and bought a bottle of Toni & Guy Sea Salt Texturizing Spray. The bottle says it’s “for beachy locks” and “natural waves”. In addition to water and salt, it has 20 other ingredients. Sodium Benzoate, Disodium EDTA and Phenoxyethanol were never part of my beachy hair fantasy, but I’ll admit that my waves come to life when I spray this stuff on.

Discovering salt spray made me realize that my fantasy hair was based on a misapprehension about what made Baywatch babes look so sexily tousled. It probably took hours to make them look “natural”. Now I knew their secret, and I didn’t need a tropical sea after all.

Revising My Island Fantasy

I’ve decided it’s bad manners to be mad at the Universe when it doesn’t get your order right. Instead, I’m editing my fantasy of having a tanned 20-year-old body with perfectly tousled sun-bleached waves. I’m replacing my Ian Fleming-in-Jamaica dream with something a bit more realistic.

Tomorrow I’m taking a small ferry to Greenway, the house where Agatha Christie spent her summers. I’ll imagine myself in Devon, England, as a modern-day Agatha Christie: a digital nomad blogger, typing away in a campervan overlooking the sea as the rain pours down, sipping a cup of hot tea under a mop of tousled beachy brown waves.