Remember "Which Twin has the Toni"?

This morning on a book list we were following up a reference to Eugene waves and Marcel waves and eventually home permenants were mentioned so I told my Toni story. Remember those ads? Which Twin has the Toni? In one version they had sort of shoulder length hair with soft waves. I had hair to my waist which my mother insisted not only on braiding but then looping up behind my ears. (See attached pictures, circa1948.) I thought it looked goofy and she pulled and scratched when she washed my hair and every morning it took forever to brush and braid. (When mother was in the hospital, Daddy sent me across the street for a neighbor to do my hair in the morning.)

But back to Toni. Mother was sick of my fussing. So she proposed cutting my hair and "giving me a Toni". She also mentioned a little friend of mine whose hair I envied--shoulder length, barely turned under at the bottom. (She was pretty, I thought; surely that couldn't hurt like the braids was my thinking.) So I agreed. Mother and Grandma did the Toni, each did the curls on one side. The result was AWFUL. Tight "old lady" curls, with one side MUCH tighter than the other. (See other photo, that's NOT the Grandmother of the tight curls. It was taken some years later and the uneven sides had been correcteed, but it's still pretty awful. Early 1950ies.) Is it any wonder that my Mother and I fought about hair until she died, she always wanting shorter hair and more curls, me always wanting longer hair and no curls? I think my mother saw long hair or loose curls as "wanton" in some way. She was not comfortable with the1960ies!