>Every night before he goes to bed, and each morning before he leaves for school, Bennett asks me to style his hair like Elvis. I’m not sure if he’s aware that I can barely pull my own hair into a ponytail w/o looking like I did it with my feet, but he seems to place enormous of trust in me. Besides, if I don’t intervene, he breaks into my bathroom and uses buckets of my product on his head. So, intervene I do. He sleeps almost sitting up, so as not to mess his hair. And he sits like a statue in the car in the morning — same reason. Whenever we’re out and about, he points out hairstyles that he likes… it’s really something of an obsession.
This morning in the NYT Sunday Styles section there was an article about tween boys using all sorts of body and hair products.. I showed it to Bennett because there was a picture of two boys doing their hair w/the story. M didn’t approve — thinks I’m encouraging vanity. But, as I argued, for these tween boys, the styling is all about girls.. and maybe a bit of vanity. For Bennett, at this point, he’s just expressing himself. (Sort of like when he insisted on wearing a blue blazer to school all last year.) Girls have nothing to do with it, and neither does vanity. He just wants to look like Elvis, and who doesn’t. Besides, if I told him that by doing his hair he’d get the girls’ attention, he’d stop in a heartbeat. Girls. Blech.