Tales From a California Blonde: How to wear a fuschia mohawk once upon a time

Did you grow up in the 1980's?

Then you probably have your own photographs with "unusual" hair styles as well.

I recently came across my teenage driver's license while doing our annual clean-the-house-from-top-to-bottom spring cleaning marathon.

After laughing my socks off for several minutes, I took a good look at my old license and a flood of memories from the 80's came rushing back.

MTV had hit the scene and was a pop culture phenom. It changed music and the videos produced to promote artists--instantly.

The music was fun, pseudo-philosophical and extravagant: Duran Duran. The Cure. REM. U2. Cocteau Twins.

And the fashion: Well, horizontal stripes, doorknocker earrings, and plastic shoes were pretty much an 80's necessity despite being major fashion vomitus today.

But the first hairstyle memory that clobbered my brain was the pre-mohawk hair style that sat on my head. How did I come to have such a crazy a** pile spilling all over my face?

Hair was big in the 80's and I wore every fad there was. After first trying out the "big hair," which entailed lots of backcombing and Aqua Net, I ventured out of the box with "steps" on the left side of my head. One day, just for the hell of it, I took a pair of household scissors and cut three or four horizontal lines right into my hair, one "step" on top of the other, while leaving my hair long and straight on the other side.

While most of the kids at high school thought my new hairstyle was pretty cool, when the other girls started cutting steps into their hair, I knew I had to up the ante.

I went to Joan, my mom's hairdresser at The Hair Doctors, and told her that I wanted to do something a bit more radical.

I told Joan to cut the sides and back of my hair short and to backcomb what was left on top until it stood straight up, a la Aimee Mann of Til Tuesday. (Hush, hush...keep it down now...voices carry...)

Of course, Joan had no idea who Aimee Mann was, but she jumped right in and did what all good hairdressers do.

I went to school the next day and was the new topic of discussion.  I loved it.

I loved my new hair style so much that I went to the DMV and had them capture its full glory on my new license. But within a week or two, I saw my hairstyle being copied once again. What would I do now?

I decided to color my hair--but not your ordinary platinum blonde or ridiculous Sun-In highlight spray that the other teens loved to use.

No. I chose my favorite color--pink--and not your run-of-the-mill pastel baby-girl pink. I chose the brightest shade of pink I could find. Fuschia...in all its glorious brightness.

I have to say that it was marvelous. I wore my fuschia hair with pride and when the other students began coloring their hair fuschia too, I took the final and most drastic hair step of my youth.

I got a mohawk. Yes, a full-blown mohawk with the sides of my head shaved and the middle row standing up straight, firmly at attention.

For my teen years that moment was as good as it got. There was nothing more radical at the time than sporting a mohawk and my mohawk wasn't the ordinary, plain jane mohawk either.

My mohawk was fuschia at first and then I changed things up. I chose a more subtle hue for my new mohawk...lavender. A feminine, soft shade of purple that accented my newly pierced nose and nose-to-ear chain quite nicely.

I really loved my mohawk back then and I felt so...strong. Different. Independent.

Of course, all the little boys in my daughter's elementary school wear mohawks today and it's no big deal.

But back in the 80's, wearing a mohawk was revolutionary. And my revolution lasted a year or two, until I became pregnant with my son and reality brought me back into "normal" society.

Looking back at that old driver's license makes me laugh at the foibles and false triumphs of youth or at  least affords me a chuckle at my own expense.

I'm just glad I survived the 80's and can shock my children with the crazy fashions and hair styles I lived through when I was a child.

What about you? What were your fashion and hair highlights from the 80's?

To read the last Tales From a California Blonde article, click here.

**To receive N. E. Francis's articles in your email, just click on the Subscribe button at top of article.**

(Copyright © 2010 N. E. Francis. All Rights Reserved. Article may not be reproduced, reprinted or shared in any manner, in any medium, without written consent of author.)

Tales from a California Blonde is a weekly column published every Saturday exclusively at Examiner.com. The humorous column features the joys and challenges of N.E. Francis's life: being a journalist and author, an artist, a mother and wife and the other roles that wild women often fill.