Tonight, me and psychic Jessica stood together before a mirror in Urban Outfitters, skeptically observing our reflections. We were both wearing skinny headbands on our foreheads and wondering if our late embrace of this trendy style would lead us down a dark path.



Perhaps you know the trend of which I speak. It is a revival of an early '80s look; in fact, I rocked the look in the early '80s myself — a thin braid of purple satin and glittery gold with a long tail that dangled feathers and beads from the tip. You tied it around your forehead and let your feathered bangs sort of fling out in stiffly hairsprayed wings around it. The current incarnation’s look is a bit different in that you can just yank it over your sloppy, long hair so it has a more slovenly hippie feel to it, rather than clean and disco. Jessica’s skinny headband was a double layer of a wide black braids with a bit of silver running through it; I had on two double-skinny headbands, one black glitter and the other gold, so it looked like I was sporting a total of four skinny headbands on my forehead. If you’re going to do it, fucking do it.

But, should we do it? There was a lot to consider. We both confessed that we would feel totally self-conscious wearing them, as if they were glowing, blinking neon bands of light that spelled TRYING TO ROCK A TREND. We’ve seen girls wearing these for half a year now, wasn’t it pathetically late for us to join the skinny headband tribe? And, the biggest concern: were we simply too old to be wearing skinny headbands? Ladies magazines love to repeat that if you embraced the retro trend the first time around, you should not participate next time it pops up, but I hate fashion rules. They’re oppressive and ageist and generally a killer of good times. I was already wearing a micro-mini, far to short for a 36-year-old, and a pair of psychedelic leggings, another youthful trend and one I’d worn the first time, back in the '80s, when they had stirrups. Even still, the skinny headbands (or, as Tara J. calls them, head strings) seem much more flamboyant, much more conspicuous. It’s hard to feel casual about it, maybe because it’s cutting off all circulation at your forehead.

“You look better than you did in your twenties, you should get it,” Jessica encouraged. It is true that in my twenties I sported a malt liquor bloat and a face splotched with red from the dehydrating, sleep-depriving effects of cocaine and ecstasy. It seems cruel that now that I am at my detoxed best, any fashion would be off limits.

“Does it hurt?” Jessica asked about my more elastic headband. She is one of those people that care if their fashion hurts. It did feel uncomfortable, but I think fashion should be uncomfortable, in that it should be a venue for you to push your comfort levels, experiment, take risks, defy convention. Which is why I bought my glittered head strings and wore them home on the bus, feeling like everyone was staring at me.

And, in fact, a guy did strike up a conversation, but it was my City Lights tote that inspired him to offer me his transcript of an interview with Lawrence Ferlinghetti on Democracy Now. However, when I couldn’t remember the name of the gallery I’d been at earlier, and he suggested I might be high on mushrooms, I know it was my sloppy hippie head strings that gave him that idea. (The gallery, by the way, was the Gregory Lind Gallery, and it was a show of new work by Chris Duncan, one of my favorite artists, whose work creates a new aesthetic for mystical ideas of the cosmos, one that includes bright polka-dots, hot pink electrical tape, cut paper, flying geometrical shapes, blobs of color and freaky string installations — my dream universe!)

When I got home, I brought my head-stringed head to Rocco for his opinion. “Is it supposed to be that messy?” he asked, his voice suspicious. Yes, It Is, I replied, my voice defensive. I could tell he thought I was trying to look like a cocaine-huffing twentysomething, but I’ve grown attached to my head strings. I like the way they pushed my hair up and into my face. What’s wrong with looking like a cocaine-huffing twentysomething, especially if you have the skin of a sober thirtysomething?

On the phone, I told Jessica that Rocco wasn’t feeling my head string. “It’s good to disagree with your partner,” she said. “It means you’re not merging.” Whew. I probably have about a week or so before the skinny headband thing is completely over. I’m not taking mine off.