(to be read with a wink and a smile)
No one wants to talk about it; everybody sees it and just lets it go on existing as though this deadly combination is something we can all learn to live with, a necessary evil perhaps. The truth is that this “thing” I’m introducing you to promotes deep divides, anxiety and mistrust. You know what I’m talking about… it’s a historical fact,
It’s White girls and their Blond ponytails.
I’ve been both attracted to and repulsed by them from conception. Yes, in the womb on a very deep chemical encoded level I knew that White girls had Blond ponytails-- and I likewise knew that they were pure evil.
There are so many examples in contemporary times of White girls and their Blond ponytails gone wild on our collective psyche. They laugh at us, mock our plot in life and I truly believe that despite being attached to a “duh” and a smile, they know exactly what they’re doing.
Britney Spears used to have a ponytail loaded with evil… but after years of promoting bigger, fuller, more intensely evil Blond ponytails through unnatural means… like glued in extensions, she lost her real ponytail to damage and excess, and then shaved it all off of course.
She is getting her due I say. She was flipping and swinging that goddamn Blond ponytail around for years with no one to stop her. Her ponytail had a mind of its own! It was hypnotizing the world and I believe it needed to be stopped.
Jessica Simpson is a little bit more conservative with how she uses her ponytail, and thanks to famed stylist Ken Paves she will likely never be totally follicularly challenged (I think I made that word up). She goes to pros, which understand maintenance and the relative sanity of clipping in pieces to add volume.
I’m not going to hate on her line of clip in extensions. (On a side note, I don’t use hers because they’re synthetic) Still though, I think we all feel the impact of the kinder-gentler form of evil her ponytail creates, and I’ll tell you why…
It’s the way it swings so carefree, so seemingly entitled to have every damn thing handed to it on a silver platter. Her Blond ponytail is bouncing in front of my relaxed, flat ironed and yet still kinky nappy ass hair with reckless abandon, and it f**king offends me.
Her ponytail can do cool stuff like go to St. Barts with a guy she likes and get thrown in the ocean without being totally spazzed out looking for the rest of the day. Her ponytail can be achieved by flipping her head over, while still staring you straight in the eye no less, and after a quick comb thru with the hands and snap of the rubber band can achieve tousled, just out of bed, sex kitten status in under 60 seconds. EVIL EVIL EVIL Blond ponytail!
This has been going on for years. I remember recess, Beauvoir Elementary School, I’m the only Black girl (though technically bi-racial) but Black because I got the kinky side of that battle. In front of me, running with platinum Blond pony tailed destructive purpose is Casey Cramer. Her head is held high with hopeful pride, cheeks full of glow, chin jutted slightly out, eyes straight ahead towards the infinite possibilities held for her in life and in that brilliantly blue sky. And her ponytail is swinging happily.
How could I have never noticed this before?! I watch it float to the left, do a midair double-bounce-hop, and then come tumbling down only to sway like an angelic pendulum to the right and accomplish a similarly spectacular aerobatic combination of Blond-swish-bounce-hop wonder. I am behind Casey, literally foaming at the mouth-- amazed, inspired, in awe of this miracle.
I touch the back of my head and am shocked to find that there is, despite my general happy attitude towards life, no swinging Blond ponytail attached to my head. There isn’t even a full Afro puff. I have a little spry, wiry, “trying to have a ponytail”, tuft of hair. It’s not Blond and it isn’t bouncing at all. My hair is slicing razor like through the air. It’s not hanging 10. The girl behind me isn’t looking at me with spellbound benevolence. This was shock and awe before the Pentagon coined the phrase. I look, horrified, back to Casey with new eyes. She is no God sent creature of Blond pony-tailed beauty. She is evil and that’s all there is to it.
I’d show that damn Casey Cramer I think to myself and I start moving my head from left to right with fast speed skater style movements. I then put a dip in my center move, therefore creating an intense Mike Tyson-esque bob and weave with my chin. I am rocking my own world. I am hell bent on getting my ponytail to catch wind. After I’d made it half way around the blacktop a teacher approached me with a look of genuine concern that I’m sure is usually saved for those "special" students who illicit compassion from adults. She wants to know what’s wrong with me… am I OK?
"No" Mrs. Brobeck I think to myself… "I’m not OK". There is a Blond ponytail swinging before my very eyes and the world is suddenly a cruel new place.
-Katie Rost
