We know it as: glitter.
It adds sparkle, sizzle, daylight.
The lady who cuts my hair is a Modern Burlesque dancer. As she evens out the left and right side and snip, snips off tired tips, she talks about bedazzling bras and about the scintillating stage names of her stripping sisters.
At one point in the haircut, as she’s describing elbow-length gloves she’s attaching 10,000 crystals to, I think about mentioning the Times article I read on glitter. But she bustles on to another gal’s corset gilded with a dozen boas of Big Bird’s feathers, positioned to conceal the rubber chicken pasties beneath.
I think about the Urban Dictionary’s entries for “chickenhead,” and I again choose to remain silent.
Usually I can concoct a couple of questions to ask, a thoughtful complement to make a monologue a conversation, but nothing seemed an appropriate interruption as she was describing one of her customers and her husband in the front row of her first show, how her parents were there, too, to cheer her on, and how she felt sassy, self-assured, and simultaneously faintly reluctant.
I keep it to myself, but I think, that’s sort of how glitter makes me feel, too!
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What is glitter to you?
shewhodaresnothing 