Salon Talk

Margaret Thatcher has always been a woman I truly admire. I love
her nickname "Iron Lady" and that she, in her diplomatic days,
was an iron fist in a velvet glove. Charming, beautiful, intelligent and
strong. But I just don't want to have her hair. My sister and I were
chatting the other day about death and I made her promise me, when
the time came, sometime in the very distant future, that I wouldn't have
"Thatcher hair" as I lie in my casket. A few years back, I went to
a young girl to have my hair cut and highlighted. She had her own little
shop in a small town near ours. Some of my friends, with chic modern
styles, were her patrons, so I had no worries. She spent an inordinate
amount of time on me, tweaking and snipping for hours. When she
finally twirled me around in the chair and handed me a mirror, to
properly view the finished product, I was horrified!! There on my head
perched a stiff, teased and perfectly flipped nest of molded hair that
made me look exactly like the Iron Lady. Maybe because I was old

enough to be this girl's mother, she assumed I needed a nice

matronly hairstyle. But this was definitely not the fresh new look we
had previously discussed. Everything else was a blurr, hunkering
down in the seat, driving home at breakneck pace, before I could
be spotted by anyone I knew. I was lucky not to have been stopped

for speeding. But then, what cop in his right mind, could possibly

give Margaret Thatcher a ticket?