Ode to a Now Defunct Curling Iron (I promise, it’s not just about the curling iron)
Saying goodbye to old faithful means beauty is more than skin-deep
This post is different than my usual update here at Classically Cultured. For this year’s Mother’s Day, I’m sharing an essay I wrote a couple of months ago that I had planned on debuting in a book featuring a collection of essays. The book is taking some time to come together because my clients and my Substack publication remain my top priorities. Since I don’t have a definitive release date yet for the book, I thought I’d share this essay today. It honors the mothers and matriarchs of our families, as well as sheds light on how important unassuming beauty rituals can be, even for an irredeemable tomboy like me ;)
I hope you enjoy this personal essay, and I wish a Happy Mother’s Day to the matriarchs in your life and in mine— to the ones who are still with us in life, and to the ones whose spirit and memory remain a life force.
The inevitable happened just the other day. As I finished the final stages of the arduous American female experience known as “getting ready,” a plot twist occurred in my finely tuned process. As I plugged in my number one hair accessory, its ready light flickered, sending me signals of its final breaths of life. Cold to the touch, I readied myself for an event that I knew was a long time coming, though I chose not to think about it too much.
My beloved curling iron was a goner.
At first glance, the curling iron looks like your average hair tool. It’s a clipless iron with a white handle and black barrel. It sports a long electrical cord that can wrap around the house like an old wall phone (remember those days, when showers were still hot and heating pads were too?).
So, what makes this typical hair tool essay-worthy? It’s not necessarily the tool itself, though it did create perfect romantic waves every time. No, it wasn’t its function, nor its design. It was the fact that I had the tool as part of my beauty arsenal since my high school years. For nineteen years, more than half of my life, its white hot heat and slender frame was a part of my beauty routine that, if you’re like me, is borderline ritualistic. It tamed my rebellious locks for two proms, countless dates with my future husband, girls’ nights out, holidays and birthdays, baby showers, my sister’s wedding, and my own.
During a time when throwing out the days-old for the hourly-new is en vogue, the moment marked more than the sputtering out of a beauty tool. It marked the moment I’d have to wade through the product descriptions of today’s newest styling tool trends that made my beloved curling iron look archaic. Motorized curling wands felt like they’d turn my knotty locks into a fine bird’s nest. Others were too big and short. Some were much too long and skinny. After several minutes of scrolling, I took to the archives of my glam room and pulled out a curling iron I had stashed in the back of a drawer for desperate times such as these.
It’s a plump little powerhouse. Shortstock could best describe its barrel, but its pink hue gives it a voluptuous feel, versus clunky. Its elegance lies in its ability to heat up in less than thirty seconds. And its turbo button contains an air of mystery I’m too nervous to investigate. It’s not for sale anymore and therein lies its worthiness. It’s a classic among trends. In a world full of Kardashian products, I gladly wield this Bette Davis beauty weapon with defiance, grace, and precision.
The curls aren’t the same, but they’ll do for now. They’re more relaxed and textured rather than romantic and bouncy.
But, as promised, this is about more than just the curling iron.
The end of my longtime curling iron meant the end of an era—with a flood of memories and realizations taking its place.
Women Who Deserve Pearls
I hail from the South and still live in the South. Down here, beauty is taken seriously. Southern women have their glam process down to a science. They refer to their makeup as “war paint.” And do not mess with their Chanel No. 5 perfume. Others may find this aspect of southern culture trivial, but a deeper look reveals customs, not costumes.
In a world where pajamas are now accepted streetwear, many southern women still pride themselves on outer appearance, with an understanding that true beauty shines through from within. One bona fide southern jewel given to young women on special occasions as an almost rite of passage is the pearl. Pearl necklaces and earrings are often found in many southern women's jewelry collections. Once discovered in the mighty rivers of Mississippi and Tennessee, pearls now symbolize a young woman’s maturity. The jewel is a concretized representation of what she has experienced, what she has overcome, and how all of that has shaped her into the woman she is.
I was lucky enough to grow up in a house with women who deserve all the pearls. My mother made a living as a writer during a time when she used initials for her first name so editors thought she was a man. She loves her work and my father fearlessly and faithfully, and her dedication to her art and our family inspire me everyday. Growing up, it inspired me so much that following in her artistic footsteps was never a question but an answer for me.
She was the first to help me realize the ritualistic nature of getting ready. Each day, whether she was working from home or out and about running errands, without fail, her lips would be painted, lashes lengthened and defined, and earrings adorned. When she was working, I’d occasionally sneak into her room and sit at her makeup table, swiping a bit of rose-colored lipstick onto my lips as I imagined myself getting ready for my own book launch.
Unlike my mother and sister, feminine beauty did not come naturally to me. I was a tomboy’s tomboy with a wish to be the son my father never had. This was my own wish not born from demands of others. There’s a popular classic country song by Merle Haggard called “Mama Tried.” In my case, Daddy tried. He tried to instill ladylike qualities. Some days maybe he thought he succeeded. During football season, not so much. And don’t ever expect me to hold a pinky out while I’m taking down a cheeseburger.
Amid my skinned up knees and hands, sweaty, oily brow, and oversized t-shirts, my mother taught me something very important, not because she sat me down and told me, but because she embodied it herself.
She taught me that in order to be strong, I didn’t have to be a boy. She taught me that strength is both feminine and masculine, and each of us contains our own unique version of what “strong” means. Just because I wanted to play football didn’t mean I had to forgo lipstick. Back then, that was a revolutionary concept. Today, though it still is, athletes like Ilona Maher, whose tagline is “Beast, Beauty, Brains,” embody this lesson nobly while donning bright red lipstick on the rugby field.
Bangs are Never the Answer
I carried over the lessons from my mother’s daily morning beauty routine into adulthood. My own makeup table, my own lipstick, and my own quasi-scientific process marked moments of quiet reflection—when through lining brows and brushing unruly hair I centered myself. I thought about work and my goals, my husband and our little family, my mother who hasn’t lost one bit of her vitality over the years, and women before her who, through war, depression, hard winters and insufferable summers, managed to make their outside match their inside: gracious, full of light, shimmering, and radiant.
As I stood there staring at my curling iron, flickering between on and off as it tried to keep the bridge intact between past and present one last time, I finally unplugged it. If you’ve ever seen the Tom Hanks film Apollo 13, I felt about like the crew did when they had to ditch their capsule in space that had offered them protection from the unforgiving elements as they raced to repair their ship. No cinematic music played in the background as I admired my now-retired vessel though. Only silence, me, and a dead curling iron.
As I wrapped the lengthy cord around its icy barrel, I passed right by my kitchen trash can and headed towards the annals of my glam room. It deserves to rest in my beauty graveyard filled with crimpers that didn’t work out, shades of lipstick too dark for my fair complexion, and beauty trends that made me look like a lady of the night while it made models look like, well, models. It did not deserve to spend its last moments of glory in some city dump where it will be crushed, repurposed, and demoralized. It curled the locks of my highschool girlfriends giddy about dances, dates, and part-time job interviews. How could I part with such an artifact?
It never left me through all those years—through the punk rock hairstyles of the 2000s, the bleach blonde dye job my good friend botched because we lost track of time watching Batman Begins (Cillian Murphy’s chiseled jaw line and ice blue eyes will do that to a girl), and through a post-breakup bang experiment that left one of my best friends saying, “I don’t care how bad the break up was, bangs are never the answer.” Especially when you have a cowlick right in the middle of your hairline at your forehead like me.
Routines and Rituals
The beauty world is often brushed off as that of a vain industry. But when looking at the humanity behind it, the countless women buying and trying products that instill confidence, highlight their features, and make them feel like a flashy glimpse of their passion-filled souls can be found on the surface of the thing that makes them so beautifully unique, their faces, one can see there’s a reason I’ve been calling a beauty routine a ritual throughout this story.
Rituals heal. Rituals foster connection. Rituals pass down treasured traditions from one generation to the next. While men often bond over sports (I love football just as much as the next southern woman), women often bond over their skincare routines and secrets they picked up from their hair stylists. Lasting friendships are born from one compliment, “Your hair looks amazing!” or one obstacle, “How do I fix this winter frizz?” Almost every woman I know swears by at least one beauty product that would act as the start of their villain origin story if it was discontinued.
Some people might call that vain, or simple, or shallow. Those people didn’t hide a young mother’s puffy eyes as she continued to take care of her family after the death of a loved one like her concealer. Those people did not make a breast cancer survivor feel sexy like her Chanel No. 5. Like my curling iron, still tucked away safely in my drawer that doubles as a beauty time capsule, these things do more than enhance features, these things enhance fundamental principles and virtues.
Pearls, perfumes, and curling irons. In a world that is asking of women more than ever before, these things restore our dignity and provide us with quiet moments to center our thoughts and align our purposes. These things do not hide our faces but highlight the lighting and shadows of our souls. They contour our individuality.
The Crossroads of Girlhood and Womanhood
So many memories are attached to my now defunct curling iron. I earned my way through the crossroads of girlhood to womanhood with it. It doesn’t simply represent me (though that’s job enough for one unassuming styling wand), it represents the allure of my sister, whose thick dark wavy hair never needed the coaxing of curling cream and heat. It represents my mother, who taught me there is no war between beauty and strength, but a marriage. It represents my grandmother, from whom I inherited an obsession with tresses. And it even represents an interesting time in the beauty industry, when curling irons were set free from their clasps. Naked barrels, for a moment, reigned supreme.
Over Super Bowl Sunday (my favorite holiday), I gave my niece her first “makeover.” A little shimmery eye shadow (she requested Chiefs colors), some clear lip gloss, and dark red glittery eye blacks.
As I stood there curling her hair with my voluptuous wand with the frame and heat of Bette Davis and her gut punch attitude, and we chatted about school, sleepovers, hair wash, and of course football, I had a moment where I wished my old black and white barrel could have been witness to the conversation. Because it wasn't just a conversation. It was a bonding moment between generations, with a brand new bridge forming over connection, wisdom, and timeless makeup and hair tips.
My nephew was so enamoured with the process, he even asked if he could be next. His “makeover”? I combed his hair, added a little face moisturizer to his sun-kissed skin, and sprayed him with just a touch of a fresh ocean sent for men from one of the beauty capitals of America, Bath & Bodyworks.
Deeper Lessons
As a fierce tomboy, I could have missed out on these moments had I not grown up with a mother who helped me realize I wouldn’t have to ditch my calloused fingers from guitar or love of wrestling with the boys just because every now and then, I wanted to date one of them too. If anything, my football knowledge and six-string helped me, not hindered me, with the boys.
In a world where society is obsessed with junking perfectly working products for the trendy and the flashy, I realized in that moment I had accomplished a remarkable feat. I had held on to one single curling iron for almost 20 years. And through holding on, I attached to it a sacredness because of all the sacred moments it was a part of. Sacred moments made all the more hallowed because I did something that is lost in today’s world. Though new shiny things came along, though its cord warped and its color faded, though its heat prop hinge squeaked and its on/off light was shotty at best towards the end, I held on. I didn’t hold on until the first inconvenience. I didn’t hold on until its first paint chip or burn mark bestowed upon me (and there’ve been many—I’m a south paw). I held on until the very end, until it couldn’t hold on to me anymore. And when we couldn’t hold on to each other anymore, I didn’t trash it. I let it rest because it has more than earned its respite.
It does not take a literary expert to see these lessons apply to more than just curling wands and beauty products.
As I relayed the story to my niece (she loves stories), I hoped she would gain something from the tale.
If she doesn’t learn anything else from me, I hope she learns this—when something, or someone, is there for you through thick and thin, darkness and light, peaks and valleys, and as Charles Dickens said, the best of times and worst of times, you don’t nix it for the next best thing or if it makes a mistake. You hold on to those who enrich your life, who are with you for precious moments, who comfort you in private moments, and give you hope for the future no matter the circumstances, wear and tear, or age.
The lessons of beauty can teach you more than how to do a smokey eye. Look closely enough and deeply enough, and you’ll see the lessons of beauty aren’t just skin deep. When you’re a sentimental artist like me, they run river-deep throughout your body, mind, and soul.
The Art of Beauty
I learned a lot about life from school. But nothing compares to the wisdom passed on and lessons learned from my mother as she braided my hair, from my sister’s best friend as she painted my nails and gave me one of my first makeovers, or from my sister who never once got mad at me if I “borrowed” a lip gloss or scrunchie. These women shaped my image of womanhood during a girlhood full of anger, confusion, elation, and surprise. My humble curling iron, with the endurance of Rocky Balboa and the loyalty of that pair of jeans from Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, represents their effort, attention, and time they put into teaching me womanhood is not a single recipe, but a cookbook full of flavors, nuances, and combinations that can’t be replicated from woman to woman, which is what makes the art of beauty so beautiful.
As I curled my niece's hair and gave her those romantic, bouncy waves that act as the perfect ice breaker for making new friends or making grand entrance, hopefully I taught her more than technique and hair care routine. Hopefully, like the women before me, I taught her, it’s never just about the hair.
From my mother and sister to grandmothers, aunts, and friends, they all taught me, with their undeniable wisdom and irreplicable beauty:
It’s not just about the curling iron, or the type of curl, or the products used to set the curls. It’s about so much more.
It’s about the one wielding the iron.
Thank you for a peek into a world about which I know next to nothing!
Thank you, Rebecca, for this wonderful essay.