Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Dallas Blondes
Joe Bob Briggs on a social history of Dallas blondes, Eric Celeste on why Jessica Simpson is the most powerful woman in the world, Gene Street on blondes he’s loved, and Laura Kostelny on why she turned to the bottle.
A Social History of the Dallas Blonde
Ours is the only city in the country that evokes a hair color. Just how did that happen?
By Joe Bob Briggs
There are all kinds of blondes. Honey blondes, golden blondes, strawberry blondes, platinum blondes, suicide blondes, dirty blondes, dishwater blondes, dime-store blondes, million-dollar blondes, all-American blondes, airhead blondes. But there is only one Dallas Blonde.
The Dallas Blonde is not about the hair, as we’ll see, but the hair is the window to her soul. The Dallas Blonde, first of all, is very blonde. Of the 37 shades of blonde known to professional colorists, she runs from Golden Platinum (palest of the pale) to Light Ash to Golden Strawberry, but she wouldn’t be caught dead as a Butterscotch or a Brownish Blonde. Her head is like a scrim of reflected light, and she’s forever in search of the purest, palest aura.
But the Dallas Blonde is not just concerned with color. She’s also mad about volume. I don’t want to use the term “big hair,” because that would be so ’80s, but Jennifer Aniston, for example, would never be mistaken for a Dallas Blonde because she has entirely too few follicles. The straightened coif of a Dallas Blonde might zigzag across the forehead, or the Tower of Power Blonde might pouf it up into the ozone, but there’s a Hair Statement being made here. This is blondeness with some heft. Minimum blow-dry time: 45 minutes.
Finally, the Dallas Blonde is infinitely groomed. She’s highlighted, she’s teased, she’s styled, she’s shagged, she’s razor-cut, she’s arrayed with barrettes and earrings (earrings for a Dallas Blonde are not jewelry; they’re a frame for the hair). And, above all, she’s accessorized. She’s got the shoe thing going on, and the purse thing, and the precise shade of lip gloss to set off the theological marvel that sits atop her cranium. Because, yes, being blonde in Dallas is a religion, and the hair itself is the holy of holies in the Blonde Temple—everything points thence.
Do you think I overstate my case? What about California blondes, you might ask? What about Swedish blondes? Didn’t they invent blondeness? What about Norma Jeane Baker, who morphed into Marilyn Monroe when she went blonde and made it a standard of seduction? I would argue that all of these blondes are actually precursors, early prophets and prototypes, and that in any event, they don’t hold up as avatars of blondeness on closer inspection. Blonde jokes were invented for the California blonde, who is all empty-headed beach-dwelling exuberance, a girl with a frozen smile and a cheap bikini who inhabits the erotic dreams of surfer dudes. The Scandinavian blondes cancel themselves out by sheer overkill. I lived in Denmark for a year and became sated with the sameness of it all. They don’t enhance their blondeness. They don’t live blonde. They just happen to be victims of a recessive gene.
The Dallas Blonde, on the other hand, has made a choice to be blonde. She hasn’t been born into the breed; she’s clawed her way toward perfection. There’s no such thing as a wispy Dallas Blonde, nor will you find a Dallas Blonde who could be called retiring, introspective, or mousy. A Dallas Blonde is always the girl who smashes the beer bottle on the tabletop when trouble arrives, not the one who clings to her boyfriend’s lapels. A Dallas Blonde occupies major space in the room. She might be a little hippy. She’s never fat, but she might be what’s called thick, or chunky, or just big-boned. You can’t carry Dallas Blonde hair on the chassis of a Ford Focus. And even if she’s razor-thin, the overall impression is that she takes the stage. She’s here to be reckoned with. Attention must be paid.
I know what you’re thinking. “He’s been giving this subject entirely too much thought.”
Yes, I have. I’ve been wallowing in it for a while now. It’s Gene Street’s fault.
It’s like this. At the Cool River Cafe located in the international terminal of DFW Airport, the legendary restaurateur sometimes personally works the greeting station. Since the place is always abuzz with tourists and business travelers, and since Street is known for being a man who’s never passed up a conversation, he uses the opportunity to ask people the question “What do you think of, when you think of Dallas?”
No. 1 answer, for Americans, is “the Cowboys.” (No. 1 internationally is “J.R. Ewing.” Yes, it’s still in overseas syndication.) Close behind are “Business” and “Mark Cuban.”
Blondes are No. 4. No other city in America evokes a hair color. And Street says it’s equally true regardless of nationality. Russians, Australians, South Africans—they all associate blondeness with the city. This is the case even if their primary exposure is through the old Dallas TV series—odd, since the only blonde regular was the fourth-billed female, Charlene Tilton. (Miss Ellie doesn’t count. Although, if we had space enough and time, I could wax lyrical about the sub-category called the Matriarchal Dallas Blonde, best represented by Ebby Halliday and Kim Dawson, two women whose blondeness so penetrated into their genes that it became a sort of distaff corporate jet fuel.) At any rate, Gene Street swears by the scientific accuracy of his survey. (For more on his fixation on blondes, see Street’s essay below.)
But how does such a thing happen? How does a city become known for its pilar pigmentation?
As a matter of fact, we know exactly how such a thing happens. Not only do we know how it happens, but we know precisely when it happened—on Monday, November 10, 1975. But not so fast. Because to understand what happened that day, you need to know a little history, the foundation on which that epic moment was built. Let’s start in the year 1937. By then the Dallas Blonde was already well enough established to trigger one of the city’s most famous acts of civil disobedience. I speak, of course, of the All-Blonde City Hall Sit-In.
For the second year of the Pan-American Exposition, part of the Texas Centennial celebration that resulted in the construction of Fair Park, the producers announced that the Texanitas, or official hostesses, would be brunettes only, in keeping with the Latin theme of that year. Helen Ramsey, a 16-year-old blonde who had worked as a Texanita the previous year, was incensed.
And Helen Ramsey was not just any Dallas Blonde. Helen Ramsey, at the age of 15, had been selected for her perfectly proportioned body as the human model for Texas, the 20-foot sculpture based on the Venus de Milo that stands at the head of the Esplanade of State. Let me put this into perspective. The sculptor—Lawrence Tenney Stevens was his name—could have used the Venus de Milo as his inspiration for the female figure of the state, he in fact intended to do just that, but he found that a nubile 15-year-old Dallas girl was actually more feminine and so he used a bicameral inspiration, from a) the Louvre and b) a Dallas high school. Need we re-emphasize the power of the Dallas Blonde? At any rate, the upshot was that, a year later, the new “brunettes only” policy would not only discriminate against blondes, it would make the symbol of Texas ineligible for hostessing duties.
Ramsey, true Dallas Blonde that she was, didn’t waste any time making lame brunette gestures like, say, writing letters to the editor. She gathered together six other blondes, and they showed up at City Hall, talked their way past the receptionist by pretending to have an appointment, then took seats in Mayor George Sergeant’s empty inner office. When the mayor arrived for the day, they announced that they weren’t leaving until blondes were hired at Fair Park.
At first the mayor humored them, acting amused and sympathetic and assuming that they would eventually go away, having made their point. They didn’t leave. He conducted business throughout the day with the aggrieved blondes sitting their ground, legs demurely crossed. Eventually the mayor put in a call to the Exposition director, Frank L. McNeney, to relay the blondes’ point of view—that blondes are just as typical of Texas women as brunettes “and we refuse to be discriminated against.” Unfortunately McNeney was out of town, so the mayor suggested that the blondes come back the following day.
They would have nothing of it. They announced their intention to stay the night. By this time various downtown restaurants were sending food over, and hotels were offering rooms for the blondes—but the blondes declined the rooms, saying it was necessary for them to stay within the confines of City Hall. They did ask for a chaperone, however, and a high school teacher volunteered to stay with them for as many nights as they needed to remain. When the mayor suggested they were taking the joke too far, the blondes refused to be insulted and cordially invited him to breakfast. The chief of police sent a guard to protect the blondes’ rights. Blonde sympathizers started massing on the streets outside.
Finally, everyone gave in at once. The Exposition announced that the “brunettes only” edict was no longer in force. In less than 24 hours, Dallas Blondes had achieved their purpose.
This was perhaps the finest moment of what I will here define as the first of three types of Dallas Blondes. These seven women were prepared to go the distance—with a chaperone. These were exemplars of Church Choir Blondes. They might fool around, but you’ll have to meet them at Sunday School to find out.
But there’s another strain of Dallas blondeness, a more sinister strain, and it comes from the decades when blondeness was still a mark of shame, the Dallas pre-history when the little town at the crossroads of the Trinity was populated mostly by immigrants moving westward from the South. You had some Irish redness that would sometimes transmogrify into a sallow washed-out blonde, and you had some English peaches-and-cream matrons who carried the DNA of invading Viking rapists. But there were very few blonde girls, and they were regarded as mongrels.
This sub-species reached its apogee in the life of a West Dallas girl named Bonnie Parker, who read romance novels and had a tattoo above her right knee expressing her eternal love—for a man she ran away from. No reason to re-tell the familiar story, but I would call attention to two Dallas Blonde traits. First: the only time Bonnie was captured by police—after a botched armed robbery in Kaufman—the Kaufman grand jury no-billed her. No doubt she looked like the helpless pawn of a no-good man at the time. The second point: in their penultimate homicide, on a lonely stretch of highway near Grapevine, it was Bonnie, not Clyde, who put two shots of a sawed-off shotgun into the head of a police officer at point-blank range. Her reported remark at the time was, “Looka there, his head bounced just like a rubber ball.”
By the way, for those wondering whether I’m talking about the Faye Dunaway version of Bonnie or the much more played-out-and-used-up version you find in the photographs, my answer is: both. The real Bonnie was 4-foot-10, 85 pounds, but Faye Dunaway’s portrayal was correct because she was a goldurn Dallas Blonde! She didn’t need to comb her hair.
Now. I’m not saying that it takes 13 murders to qualify as the ultimate Blonde Bitch, but if Texanita Helen Ramsey is the goddess type, the ultimate Church Choir Blonde, then Bonnie Parker, the hash-slinging murderess from south of the river, is the anti-goddess. Of course all Dallas Blondes have a little bit of both. It’s a spectrum, and men usually know which end of the spectrum the new blonde lives on.
But Helen Ramsey and Bonnie Parker, the two extremes, are only pale versions of the third type: the Ultimate Dallas Blonde. And for this type we have to look first at the career of Mary Louise Cecilia Guinan, born on the open prairie between here and Waco in 1884 to Irish immigrants (virtually the only source of blondeness at the time) and, in her lifetime, a tomboy, a rebellious Catholic schoolgirl, a riding roping Wild West showgirl, a chorus girl, a Gibson Girl in vaudeville shows, one of the few females ever to star in silent-film westerns, and, most notably, a boozy throaty singer in Prohibition-era speakeasies, where she greeted customers with her trademark “Hello, suckers!” Under constant surveillance by federal authorities, including the same FBI agents hunting Al Capone, “Tex” Guinan would steadfastly deny that any alcohol was ever sold at any club where she worked, would never be successfully prosecuted (although she did some minor jail time), and despite numerous raids on every place she worked, would make $700,000 in the year 1926 alone. Like her rival Mae West, she would eventually be shut out of movies by the Breen Office, and by the early ’30s she’d become so notorious for her illicit love affairs and run-ins with the liquor authorities that her traveling show was banned from several European countries and she was reduced to doing road shows in North America. The ultimate good-time girl, she died on the road, at age 49, and 12,000 people showed up at her funeral.
So Tex Guinan had it all, from both ends of the Dallas Blonde spectrum. Even though she was a lifetime criminal like Bonnie Parker, she never killed anybody and she only violated laws that eventually the country decided shouldn’t have been laws in the first place. And even though she was a statuesque beauty who stood up for her rights, like Helen Ramsey, there was nothing goody-two-shoes about her. She kissed whomever she wanted to kiss, and she didn’t care who knew it. She once marched with the National Woman’s Party, protesting a law that would have limited women’s work hours. And in her will, all her remaining money went to her dear Irish mother.
One thing that was never known about Tex Guinan is exactly how many times she was married and divorced. Only two marriages are documented, but she was suspected of covering up others, not to mention the ones that she never bothered to formalize. This is an almost universal characteristic of the Dallas Blonde: no one man can satisfy her.
That, then, is the taxonomy of the Dallas Blonde and the historical backdrop against which the events of November 10, 1975, unfolded. On the week leading up to that night, ABC Sports producer Roone Arledge temporarily assigned Andy Sidaris, a former Channel 8 director who had gone on to great fame as the genius behind Wide World of Sports, to fill in for the regular director of Monday Night Football. The opponent was Kansas City. The game at Texas Stadium was close and high-scoring—and long.
Sidaris—a brash, funny, frequently profane Greek from Shreveport—was known for his love of pretty ladies. As the main college football director at ABC, he was the inventor of what came to be called “the honey shot,” which had already made many a college babe famous on campus. He’d even “discovered” a particularly fabulous University of Alabama cheerleader who became the wife of his sideline reporter, Jim Lampley. So when Sidaris took his swivel-chair seat in the remote transmission truck for the Dallas-Kansas City game, it was no surprise to anyone when he barked to his cameramen, “Okay, find the honeys!”
As the cameras panned across the sidelines, lingering on each Cowboys Cheerleader, Sidaris said, “That’s the one! The blonde! She’s having sex with the camera!” Then, throughout the evening, Sidaris would return to this particular babe, who winked, flirted, and posed in one of those defining moments that some claim launched the whole Cowboy Cheerleaders franchise. In fact, that moment may be single-handedly responsible for rescuing the fashion statement of hot pants and Daisy Mae halter ties from what should have been early-’70s oblivion so that, long after every Southwest Airlines flight attendant had burned her orange shorts, the tradition lived on in beer commercials, Maxim magazine, and Hooters restaurants everywhere.
On Tuesday, November 11, 1975, at office watercoolers across America, the conversation was not about the 34-31 final score (the Cowboys lost), but rather: “Did you see that girl? Who was she?”
And here’s the best part: to this day we’re not sure who she was. If you ask people who worked in Tex Schramm’s office at the time, they’ll tell you that the girl was Tami Barber, a pert blonde beauty who was indeed one of the most popular cheerleaders and had a brief acting career of the Love Boat guest-star variety. But the dates don’t match up: Tami Barber didn’t arrive on the scene until two seasons later, after the cheerleaders were already an international phenomenon, and Andy Sidaris went to his grave claiming it was a girl at this particular game in 1975. The official history of the cheerleaders disagrees with Sidaris and ascribes the sea change in the squad’s fortunes to a winking beauty at Super Bowl X. Indeed there was a winking beauty at Super Bowl X—held in Miami in January 1976—but she was a brunette, and that would just be wrong! And, once again, Sidaris disputed this.
But I actually kind of like the fact that we’re not sure which blonde cheerleader launched the myth. Just as the causes of the Trojan War are shrouded in mystery, and the founders of Rome come from a time before history, so the origins of the Dallas Blonde are a fit subject for endless metaphysical speculation, and it will no doubt consume the energies of several generations of the city’s theologians to parse out the best available evidence.
What we can say for sure is this: she came, she conquered, and she was blonde.
Joe Bob Briggs (aka John Bloom) is a former contributing editor to D Magazine. He lives in New York.
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Queen Jess How she came to rule over everything she surveys. By Eric Celeste
When mankind’s scroll is etched with the last syllable of recorded time, it will be possible for our Maker to review the many points in our history when the seductive power of a woman’s blonde tresses drove the civilized world mad. The most recent such entry is time-stamped as follows: “December 16, 2007, Cowboys-Eagles, 13:38 Remaining in the 2nd Quarter.”
Photo courtesy of Corbis |
That’s the exact time at which Jessica Simpson—theretofore known only as a vapid, voluptuous, harmless Dallas-bred pop tart—made her power known. Clad in a white Tony Romo jersey with a pink No. 9, her image was shown to a national television audience as the American football announcers discussed her burgeoning romance with the Dallas Cowboys’ quarterbacking lothario. What happened next may seem insignificant, even common—Flozell Adams committed a false-start penalty—but in truth the lasting image of her from that game set in motion cosmic forces we are only now beginning to understand.
In essence, her second-quarter performance proved the nonpareil power of her blondeness. That day, Jessica Simpson assumed the crown of The Quintessential Dallas Blonde—and thus became the most influential, enviable, remarkable woman of our time.
How is this possible? How can someone who once compared the smell of barbecue sauce to “chicken farts” be our modern Helen of Sparta? Is Jessica Simpson’s face, hair, or ample cleavage capable of launching a thousand ships? For our answer, we must further examine that moment when the appropriately named FOX cameras caught Simpson tugging at her jersey, staring into the nation’s collective eyes, and screaming “woo.”
For context, consider the history of the blonde as international seductress. The first such woman we do not know by name, but we estimate she came into existence some 11,000 years ago. That is when, owing to the Ice Age’s scarcity of men and the need for women to stand out as potential mating partners, a tectonic shift in pigmentation occurred, and the first fair-haired vixens sprang up in Northern Europe. In modern times, names were attached to these legendary, divisive blondes: Mae West, Marilyn Monroe, Jenna Jameson.
All these women fully understand the power potential of a blonde. The sexiest blondes represent all things to the adoring, slathering male populace. They can seem angelic and virginal, then, with a twirl and flip of their hair, they become wicked and sultry, the original good girls gone wild.
Until that fateful day last December, Jessica Simpson had displayed few of these qualities. True, the many iterations of her persona had elements of the above traits, and her singing and television careers had garnered her a certain level of fame. But these personalities—Church Choir Jessica, Virginal Jessica, MTV Jessica, GQ Jessica, Divorced Jessica, BFF w/ Christina Applegate Jessica—in no way prepared us for the overwhelming sensuality she and her hair would loose upon the world once they coalesced into the woman we now know as Yoko Romo.
Yes, she’d taken the occasional swim in Lake Hotness, especially during her big-screen, bikini-clad romp as Daisy Duke, but never for a period long enough to justify calling her our modern blonde Medusa. Until then, we’d never longed to tame the golden snakes in her head.
Remember, if you will, what she looked like when you first saw her on your television, split-screen with the quarterback of America’s Team: wide eyes, outlined in war-paint levels of mascara; soft, pale, pouting pink lips; freakishly white teeth. None of these features is what captivated the world. And it wasn’t her enormous silver loop earrings or her black Charles Nelson Reilly-sized sunglasses resting atop her head that transfixed the masses.
It was that hair. Not just its hue (that of aurulent, honeyed silk, if such a fabric were colored once every two weeks), but its bounce, its curl, its joie de vivre. It was hair that just got out of bed after a long night of lovemaking. It was hair that framed a face unaffected by fame, confident and calm no matter the harshness of the spotlight’s glare. It was hair resting on enormous boobs.
It was then that she became what all men wish for, what we have always desired: the mythical blonde she-devil, tawdry and flaxen, coquettish and golden, a wicked angel ready to teach us sinful delights.
The problem is, of course, that men can’t handle the power of a blonde woman in full. Tony Romo had his worst game of the year that day, and those of us who care for his well-being, as well as those of us who bet big on the ’Boys and gave the Eagles points, were understandably angry that she distracted her boyfriend, the nation, and beyond.
Now, though, we see it was inevitable. Her power was growing. She was in Dallas, after all, which is not only her hometown but also where you can find the throne reserved for the prettiest young big-haired blonde around. It is here where the quintessential blonde, from Bonnie Parker to Candy Barr to Morgan Fairchild, is crowned.
Now Jessica Simpson is our latest member of Dallas Blonde royalty and, by extension, the most powerful blonde Jezebel in the universe. She should know that others will mock and belittle her for this. But so what? Outside her palace, the Queen of England is made fun of, too. That does not diminish the reach of her domain. And she’s not nearly as hot as our Jess.
We in Dallas, then, should embrace Her Majesty, Jessica Simpson. For her hair defines not only her—it defines our city. If that drives you mad, so be it. That’s what blondes do.
Write to ericc@dmagazine.com.
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Blondes I’ve KnownHow a poor boy from Central Texas moved to the big city and met his true loves. By Gene Street with Larry Herold
In 1955, I was 14 years old and working the summer for my uncle at his filling station in Salado, Texas. The filling station was the hangout in Salado. A half-dozen philosophers were playing dominoes under an old live oak when a Packard convertible pulled in and honked for service. In it were Rock Hudson and a beautiful blonde. Rock was shooting
Giant, the national film of Texas. Perhaps the girl was Carroll Baker, perhaps not. We shall never know. All this poor boy knew was that the girl looked like Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, and Betty Grable rolled into one.
My job was to put the gas in and wipe the windshield. Rock got out of the car and went to the men’s room. I filled ’er up, and then I took hold of my chamois and hit the passenger side. Three swipes on the dirty windshield and I could see all the way through to the blonde inside and her white shorts, so short and so white I thought I might faint. I wiped and wiped and wiped. I had so much sweat and spit coming out of me that I had to wipe my own face with the chamois. The girl laughed with her head thrown back and then motioned for me to lean in—at which point she gave me the biggest red lipstick kiss I’d ever had.
Rock returned, smiling. “Hey, kid,” he said, “looks like your labor paid off.”
I didn’t wipe my face till school started. Even then, I would only soap it lightly. That day at the filling station, I learned the power of blonde. It did something to my knees, made my cheeks flush, and affected all the regions in between. It was a promise, somehow, but of what, I did not know. I was thoroughly unnerved and I liked it.
In those days in Brownwood, where I lived, when bleached blondes came to our church, they used to sit on the back pew. It was like they were suspected of something we knew not what, forbidden fruit. Momma didn’t shun them, but she didn’t invite them over for dinner, either.
Momma had named me Ernest, a sober sounding name if ever there was one. “Ernest Gene,” she’d say, “go out and get me a switch, and you know what for.” I tried to be good but I was already a misfit. In hardscrabble Texas in the ’50s, there were no serious and sincere roughnecks or roustabouts. My questions about blondes had nowhere to be asked. Something mysterious was going on. I could almost smell it. Although I was stuck in Central Texas with the Lord as my Shepherd, I was determined to dig deep into the mystery.
Then it happened. A town near Brownwood hired a beautiful, young straw-haired woman to teach Spanish. I was 16. It was summer, and I was once again working at a filling station. I washed her car like it had never been washed, and she said thanks in a way I had only dreamed of. I was finally on the other side of the windshield. Puberty proved to be a short season for me. The world was a wonderful place—blonde.
In Central Texas before Sputnik, folks thought a girl with a head of lustrous blonde hair might be a bit trashy, might be looking for trouble. She might even be dangerous. I found out why when I met a girl who was all that and more: Candy Barr.
Yes,
the Candy Barr, stripper, employee of Jack Ruby’s, “romantic attachment” of mobster Mickey Cohen. And possessor of a 38-22-33 frame that would knock your socks off. I’d seen her dance in the early ’60s at the Colony Club, a Dallas burlesque joint, in a white cowboy hat, six-guns in a hip-hugging holster, blonde hair sparkling in the spotlight. When things got too heavy in Dallas, she moved to Brownwood, and we met at a party at a leading citizen’s lake house. She was very good-looking and more exciting than anyone I had met in a long time. We hit it off. Since I loved the way LBJ called Ladybird “Bird,” I always called Candy “Bar.”
Bar was free-spirited, a little rowdy, a non-conformist, but beautiful in every way. She was a tease but always with taste. I well remember a cold January night after several glasses of wine when I made my first amorous advance.
“Gene,” Bar said, “let’s not ruin a good thing.”
“What do you mean?” I said, though I think I knew.
“I prefer we be friends,” she said.
She exploded my fantasy and trampled my ego in one fell swoop, but my education was in full swing. Once she even mentioned she knew Bubbles Cash, the other busty blonde famous for taking it all off. When the Cowboys used to play at the Cotton Bowl, Clint Murchison would have the trumpeter Tommy Loy play a special song when Bubbles walked up the aisle. When Bubbles heard her song, she strutted like the stunner she was.
A historian might say the Dallas blonde thing had its start with Jayne Mansfield, who went to Highland Park High and SMU. But she didn’t become known here. Bar and Bubbles did, and I’m guessing their sensual success was one reason a blonde in the ’50s in Dallas was still a disreputable thing to be.
Then I took a break in Taiwan, courtesy of Uncle Sam, and when I got back to Texas, the wind had changed. Dallas brought in something called liquor by the drink. The Cowboys were winning. Money was flying around. There was a go-go feel to the whole place. And I was still trying to figure out the mystery of the blonde.
We called ourselves the Highwaymen. A secret society, we held our meetings on Oak Lawn at J. Alfred’s, which is where it all began for me in Dallas.
Oak Lawn in the early ’70s was bikers, bums, and police. I ducked into the decrepit building that became J. Alfred’s (where Al Biernat’s restaurant now sits) one Thursday before noon and found the bartender face-down asleep on the bar. I had a little money in my pocket. I’d told my aunt I needed a loan to open a bluejeans store. It was not the first fib I’d told my family, and it would not be the last. I shook that bartender and asked him if he wanted to sell the place. He thought an angel had come down from heaven to make all his dreams come true. I splashed around some paint, dribbled sawdust on the floor, made a cigar box the cash register. Times were simpler. Boy, were they ever. The land that Al Biernat’s sits on is now owned by ex-wife No. 4, courtesy of our recent divorce settlement. But more on that in a second.
Anyway, J. Alfred’s became headquarters for the Highwaymen (a romantic term for a bunch of good-for-nothing skirt-chasers). I’d begun leading a double life. By day, I was an SMU student. (For all who think of me as a bumpkin, I’ll have you know I’m an educated bumpkin. I got a master’s degree in liberal arts from SMU in 1971.) Meanwhile I was in pursuit of a Ph.D. in nightlife. A lot of SMU professors hung out at J. Alfred’s, and I nearly convinced them to let me teach a non-credit course: Pursuit of the Blonde 101, with your host, Gene Street.
Of course we all wanted to date a Cowboys Cheerleader, but when that wasn’t possible, we’d turn our attention to a stew. Air hostess, flight attendant—call it what you will. These girls were blonde, they were glamorous, they were often out of town. It was as though the Highwaymen had designed them. How many times did I fly from Love Field to Austin and back just to meet the stews? I lost count. I never married a stew, it’s true. But that doesn’t mean I won’t.
Comes the time to fall in love with a blonde. The place: Acapulco. I’d just sold the Black-eyed Pea for a gazillion bucks, and I was on top of the world. I had a palatial estate in Acapulco and I’d chartered a plane—two planes—to haul a bunch of folks down to help open my latest venture. (It was a Mexican food restaurant. Sounds insane now, but as I say, I was riding pretty high.)
My pre-arranged date for the evening was an accomplished woman of the Dallas legal community whom I’d never met. Ask anyone—my mouth often works faster than my brain. When this striking woman showed up at the house, what I should have said was, “I met this girl on the plane. She’s a cute little blonde, and I think I might be in love with her, and, gosh amighty, I’m dreadfully sorry but I don’t think this date is gonna work out.” Instead, the first words out of my mouth were: “You’re not blonde.” Cupid can make you stupid.
Until that weekend in 1988, I’d thought of myself as a scientist. I’d come to study the eternal beauty of the blonde with all the intensity and sincerity that my momma wished I’d applied to the rest of my life. I’d married and been divorced three times, but never to a blonde. “Date ’em, don’t mate ’em” was my motto. I was afraid the reality of everyday life with one of these beauties could never measure up to the fantasy. I should have taken my own advice.
The girl I’d met on the plane was a blonde, a Texan, a Texas Tech cheerleader—what more could a Brownwood boy want? I succumbed or conquered or whatever you want to call it. In 1989 we were married on a mountaintop in Maui, and, brother, it was all downhill from there. (Maybe that’s unfairly harsh.)
Blondeness brought its own surprises. There’s no shame in being a bottle blonde but it takes a lot of chemicals to keep that natural shine. When there’s 15 bottles of bleach and coloring and treatments in heavy rotation, no question your bathroom is going smell like a beauty parlor.
Look, I know I’ve got my own regimen that can be tough to put up with. I swallow 193 different vitamins and supplements every day. I like to take showers under a garden hose out in the backyard of my fancy North Dallas house. I’ve had attention deficit disorder and motor mouth disease ever since I can remember. While recording notes to myself for this story, I left three tape recorders somewhere around Dallas. (To the person who found No. 2 and wondered who the crazy man was babbling about the night the police raided his Jacuzzi, I plead verbosity.)
The Texas Tech cheerleader put up with a lot. I’m not sure what she expected out of our marriage, but I learned one of the oldest lessons in the books: be careful what you wish for.
Anyway, I was married to the cheerleader for 17 years, and they were two of the happiest years of my life. For me, Big D stood for Big Divorce in 2006. Untold hours with lawyers, a severance check so large it makes me wince just thinking about it. Happy trails and all that.
You might think this has put me off blondes. Far from it. I hope to vote for one on November 4 to be president of our country. I’m only sad that Dallas blonde Ann Richards won’t be here to join in the fun. Those two gals would have made one heckuva twosome.
Gene Street is the founder of the Black-eyed Pea (among other restaurants). Larry Herold is a Dallas writer. +++
Blonde AmbitionIn which the author explains how and why she has been coloring her hair for 23 years. By Laura Kostelny
I turned to the bottle for the same reason most people do: insecurity, frustration, a nasty breakup, general alienation, and my mother’s persistent referrals to my hair color as “dirty blonde.” None of which is all that unusual for a 12-year-old. Adding to my preteen trauma was the fact that my father’s job in the oil business had our family living in the Middle East. I was in a rut but didn’t have the money or permission to do anything about it. But I had Madonna. At the time,
Like a Virgin seemed like the most rebellious tape you could own—sort of a musical version of Judy Blume’s Forever. It was while listening to “Dress You Up” for the 4,321st time that I decided to color my hair.
I popped the tape into my Walkman (I needed a soundtrack for the momentous occasion), walked to the store, bought a box of Nice ’n Easy, and forced my younger (and smaller) sister to assist. There were a few complications—my hair was a bit brassy, and a towel or two may have been ruined—but I was ecstatic. Here’s why: I went from wallflower to superstar. As with all serious addicts, it only took once. I was hooked. And my mother was fine with it, which in retrospect makes sense. When we left the compound, she was frequently mistaken for a local (this could have been due to the seven bangles that jangled on both arms and her unwillingness to pay retail at the street markets), and my sister to this day gets asked about Passover plans. It’s my theory that Mom thought at least one of us should look like a WASP.
I have no way of knowing whether Gwen Stefani copied my Baylor look for her No Doubt persona. All I’m saying is that by the time I had returned to the States and graduated from high school in 1990, I had also graduated to platinum. (My mother unkindly referred to it as “fluorescent.”) I ran every day, sometimes twice a day, so I never bothered to wear anything but Umbros, tiny t-shirts, and running shoes—whether to class or to bars. I rocked curling-ironed bangs with ponytails. And, God, I was skinny. So, really, I was Stefani (minus the bindi) before she was. Being blonde was extra important during those years. I hated so many things about Baylor, and my hair color was my show of mini-rebellion. It made me too trashy for the churchy people, and many of the insufferable “intellectuals” assumed I was an idiot. I liked that. I didn’t have to bother talking to people I didn’t want to talk to, a luxury you’re never really afforded in high school. Even better, in my senior year, someone called me a “bitch.” To my face. As I later explained to my sister, “It’s a good thing. Can you imagine getting called ‘dork’ or ‘loser’ or, my God, ‘fat’?” Obviously, the eating disorder distorted my thinking a bit, but I figured the boy went with “bitch” instead of “dork” because of my stunning halo of hair.
I eventually moved to Dallas and met my hairdresser and soulmate, Richard. He has wrested total control from me over the color. It’s much more age appropriate, less platinum. Of course, I would love for it to be lighter (Gwen Stefani, after all, is still pulling off the platinum look more than 10 years later). But Richard quiets me with booze, and I’m always euphoric when he’s finished. It’s as though I’ve lost 12 pounds and maybe a year or two, thanks to my blonde, blunt bangs. I trust Richard more than anyone I’ve ever dated. Put it this way: if something terrible were to happen to Richard, I know he’d take my color formula, the name of the last guy I slept with, and my true weight with him to the grave.
I can’t be sure if my dating experiences in Dallas have suffered because of the hair or the girl wearing it. And maybe brunettes and redheads find this to be true, too. But the men I’ve gone out with seem disappointed when a woman speaks. Fantasy is a wonderful thing, and if men imagine their ideal blonde as a wordless, bouncing cheerleader or a kindly, silent stripper with a heart of gold, I certainly have no control over that. But this blonde has an opinion on everything and everyone—even (especially) people I’ve never met. I like to pepper those opinions with strong words. I dated a man who would attempt to parent me by saying, “Volume,” when I got loud. Surprise: the relationship didn’t last.
The last man I dated was a prolific reader—so prolific, in fact, that he liked to read my mail. Which is how he came across a rather unpleasant letter from American Express, which was threatening to take me out at the knees, turn off my card, or some such nonsense. After a particularly humiliating discussion about just how much I owed, a detailed accounting of where all my money goes, and a stern talking-to about how this sort of behavior could affect my credit score, he offered me the money. I refused. I don’t take money, condos, or cars. In my mind, that’s another sort of blonde altogether. But I was shocked by how many women told me that I should have taken the money and run.
I’m guilty of my own blonde prejudices. I wish I could say that I feel a kinship with all of my blonde sisters in town, but I don’t. I’m quick to disassociate myself from blondes with boobs and lips so overinflated that the women look as if they’re anticipating an aquatic emergency. I consider them less blonde, and more cartoon, which is fitting as males never really outgrow their cartoons. But much scarier are the flaxen-haired helmet ladies who lunch, the ones with tight smiles and perfect makeup. They can make any clothing item—even if it’s Armani—look like it came from Talbot’s. Ladies, don’t be the blonde who asks, “Where do you worship?” as a follow-up to “Nice to meet you.” It’s none of your business, and, frankly, the conversational possibilities it invites should bore anyone to tears.
Negatives aside, I’ve spent 23 years pursuing my color of choice, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop. I certainly don’t foresee anyone asking me to. Even when my frugal ex began rattling off “luxuries” he felt I should forgo, hair coloring did not make the list. When I brought it up, he said, “That’s not really an option.” Damn right.
Laura Kostelny is the managing editor of D Home.
Write to laurak@dmagazine.com.
