Debra's Shaved Head
How a mid-90s icon taught me what pretty really means.
This is the first edition of 1982, a new newsletter by Shani Silver and a place for her to create the internet her generation deserves. Alright enough with the third person HI YOU GUYS. Thank you for subscribing. There is so much I look forward to writing and sharing in a space where no one’s going to think I’m weird or old or past my relevancy—because you don’t want to feel that way either. This week’s newsletter contains a Personal Essay, Solo Income Home Decor, style and beauty thoughts in “Y Wear This”, a Generation Y-specific moment that doesn’t give a shit how cute of an Instagram a garment would make, and Good Follows, basically the social media accounts I send to friends that they never follow, but like really you should. Welcome to 1982!
Personal Essay: Debra’s Shaved Head
Remember head lice? Not the best opening line, fair—stay with me anyway. Remember playing innocently with your friends in kindergarten then coming home somehow with lice and being treated like you’d intentionally dipped yourself in toxic waste? I do. At five years old I came home with lice and what I remember, apart from the smell of vinegar, is my mother crying. Not because she had a new, super fun chore to do—forking through my scalp as if looking for hidden messages in sacred text—but because she had to cut my hair. By age five, my hair rolled more than halfway down my back, and after lice it barely grazed my shoulders. This change was reflected back to me as a major loss. It was my first experience learning that long hair was the pretty kind of hair. The only pretty kind.