Dawn’s Bad Haircut

 

Interviewer:  We are talking to the girls of the comic strip, Elizabeth Caine and Dawn Enjo and Sharon Taylor or as we know her from the reenactments, Miss Edwards.  Welcome to the podcast.  Today we are going to talk about the episode titled “Dawn’s Bad Haircut.”  One of the amazing things about For Better or For Worse was that you could discuss something like a haircut as not only being bad because it did not look bad, but also the moral implications of a bad haircut.  I think the comic strip was revolutionary in that respect.

Elizabeth:  You are so right.  The foundation for using appearance to show good or evil started with the teeth.  As you know, anyone with buck teeth was automatically suspected of being morally repugnant.  In this story with Dawn, we show how two perfectly innocent girls were corrupted.  Previous by smoking and then by a haircut.   Bad hair is a sign of a person’s internal morality. 

Dawn:  I hate to disagree with my good friend, Elizabeth, but the story is really about dealing with peer pressure.  Even when we doing the recreations of what happened, we had some problems with peer pressure.  My brother and my father both refused to appear because the director insisted they had to have slanty eyes.   They won out, but the director then refused to put them in.  Our victory was that I did not have to have slanty eyes for this recreation.

Elizabeth:  You look good with slanty eyes.

Dawn:  I do not. 

Sharon:  I take exception to the idea that having some kind of physical difference has a moral implication.  I am in a wheelchair and no one ever thought I was evil because of the wheelchair.

Interviewer:  How did they think about you?

Elizabeth:  You inspired me to become a teacher.  There is nothing bad about Miss Edwards, I mean, Mrs. Taylor.

Dawn:  If anything, being in a wheelchair automatically meant you were smarter and wiser than all the other teachers. 

Interviewer:  How were other teachers in your high school?

Dawn:  I can’t remember any of them.

Elizabeth:  It feels like the only class I was ever in was Miss Edwards’ class, but I know that can’t be right.

Interviewer:   Clearly Miss Edwards was your most memorable teacher. 

Dawn:  For sure. 

Interviewer:   Dawn, tell me about this story about your hair cut.  What do you remember about it?

Dawn:  In real life, I was tired of my whole look especially my same old Japanese schoolgirl haircut.  I wanted a radical change.  Candace Halloran, now Candace Halloran-Dodd, was the trendiest girl in high school.  She said my hair was “uncool” and she was right.  So we went shopping and I got a miniskirt to show off my legs, which Candace said was my biggest asset.  Then we went to the salon.  Candace suggested a few things and we picked the cut.  The salon did a great job.  I got a punk haircut.  They were very popular in the 1990s.  Today, it’s what they would call a pixie bowl cut with a disconnected undercut. 

Elizabeth:  I looked so terrible.  It was so funny.

Dawn:  I saw it and it was so different.  I thought it looked terrible.  Candace liked it.  The hairdresser liked it.  They said it was “cool”, but I thought my mother is going to kill me and all the kids are going to laugh at me.  The sides of my head were shaved with just a little stubble. 

Elizabeth:  With that haircut, I can believe it.  It was U-G-L-Y.  People stared at her in the school.

Sharon:  I thought the haircut looked great, but Dawn was really upset by it, which was unusual for Dawn.  Elizabeth was the one always flying off the handle, but Dawn was smoother and more measured. 

Dawn:  Whatever.  What we did in the reenactment is not real life.

Interviewer:  How does the story start in the reenactment?

Dawn:  I declare I am not going to school because of a haircut when Elizabeth comes and rings the bell and knocks on the door of my house talking about how I am going to miss the bus.   This is for dramatic effect.  Elizabeth never knocked on our door or rang the doorbell.  She would just open the door and go right inside.

Elizabeth:  Even though my last name is Caine, I was born a Patterson.  I wasn’t used to this knocking or doorbell ringing.   I didn’t know the doorbell was that button.  Why didn’t you tell me I was doing it wrong?

Dawn:  It was a lot funnier to watch you try every time the director told to “Don’t knock. Just ring the doorbell.”  That got a lot more laughs than my haircut did in the reenactment. 

Interviewer:  It does seem funny.  You were knocking and ringing the doorbell at the same time.  I am glad they kept that in. 

Elizabeth:  I am not taking this again.  I learned how to do that better.

Dawn:  She did honestly.  It has been years since the last time she did it.

Sharon:  Wait.  Did you just say that Elizabeth did not know how to knock or ring a doorbell?

Elizabeth:  I know how to do it now.  That’s what’s important.

Sharon:  I am not sure that is true. 

Elizabeth:  Can we get back to talking about Dawn’s haircut?!!

Interviewer:  Was there a good reaction when Elizabeth saw the haircut?

Dawn:  In real life we were at the bus stop and she ran away screaming.  In the reenactment, she did, I am not kidding, a triple take. 

Elizabeth:  The reenactment audience really loves my triple takes.  My mom always said, “When the punchline isn’t funny, you can make it funny with a triple take.”

Dawn:  That’s not true.

Sharon:  If it’s not funny, a triple take is not going to fix it.

Elizabeth:  Talk to me when you make people laugh the way my mother does.

Interviewer:  In this next scene of the reenactment, you are standing by the bus stop.

Elizabeth:  They couldn’t get an actual bus stop for the reenactment, so instead they had a couple of guys stand in the background around a pole and pretend it was a bus stop sign.  You can tell from looking at it that the pole is way too tall and wide to be a bus stop sign. 

Dawn:  I did have to some symbolic shame posing for this one in the reenactment.  Notice how I am carrying my backpack like it’s my baby.  The director wanted me bent over, looking down, and bowed out of shame; so he had me hug my backpack instead of wearing it on my back.  I actually had to put the backpack on my back, just so I could do the joke about my ears freezing.  I don’t think anyone got that symbolism but the director.

Elizabeth:  That’s for sure.  I hated it when they made me stand like I was pregnant to show shame.  There is no shame in being pregnant.  I loved it.

Sharon:  I loved it too.  My son, James Ethan is almost 14 years old.

Elizabeth:  Your son is named James?  Mine is too.  Did you name him after my grandfather?

Sharon:  No. 

Interviewer:  In this next scene of the reenactment, you are in the bus.

Elizabeth:  They couldn’t get an actual bus for the reenactment.  Notice how the seats in front are lower than the seats in the back and they look like benches.  They did that so you could get the angle to view us while just seeing the heads of the guys in front of us.

Dawn:  The shot was really bad. I am talking about everyone looking at me and all you get is the one extra sitting in front of us looking back and the girl behind us with her pupils pointed at me.  What was funny was after we did the reenactment, that extra started hitting on me and telling me I had great legs.  Boys!  You know.  They don’t care how your hair looks as long as you are showing a lot of skin.  I had to remind him that I was not a teenager and I was married.

Elizabeth:  We did not get the real Candace to come back for the reenactment, so we had to hire this young Candace look-alike.  If I don’t wear makeup and wear frumpy clothes, I look a lot like I did when I was 12.  Dawn is petite, she looks like she is a teenager.  But Candace looked nothing like herself at 12. 

Dawn:  That’s true.  They talked to Candace and she said her face doesn’t look like that anymore, and even with a permed hair wig, she was not going to look like her old self.  When Candace got older, her nose got longer, her lips got bigger, the whole shape of her jaw changed.  I know when I saw Candace for the first time after she graduated from high school, I did not recognize her at all.  When I see pictures of her from high school, I have a hard time believing it was the same girl. 

Elizabeth:  This actress we hired to play Candace looked more like Candace than Candace did.  She was amazing, by the way, and she was willing to play Candace for all the rest of the reenactments we did with her.  I guess actresses will do anything to get a job.  Did she sleep with the director?

Dawn:  No.

Sharon:  Did you sleep with the director?

Elizabeth:  I only sleep with boys who are going to cheat on me.

Interviewer:  The next scene shows you fighting with your locker.

Elizabeth:  This happened all the time.  Those lockers locks were tough to open. 

Dawn:  Even though I had gotten nothing but compliments on my hair and a lot of guys stared at my legs in that miniskirt, I was still mad at Candace.  You know how it is when you get mad at someone and you just can’t let it go?

Elizabeth:  I know exactly what you mean.  When you started being friends with Candace I was so jealous, I could not wait for you to get into a fight with her.  Your terrible haircut was the best thing that happened to us. 

Dawn:  Until I became friends with Shawna-Marie. 

Elizabeth:  Stop!  I eventually got over being mad about you and Shawna-Marie. 

Dawn:  Anyways, they had this locker set and they told me to pound the crap out of it.

Interviewer:  Wouldn’t you normally just trying spinning the dial on the lock again?

Dawn:  Yes, in real life, but they wanted to set up this idea that I was hitting the lockers like I would hit a person.  I told them I was a pacifist and I did hit people, but it didn’t matter. 

Elizabeth:  I have seen you hit people before. 

Dawn:  Shut up!

Sharon:  Dawn does have a temper.  In real life, her family had to pay to replace the locker she kicked. 

Dawn:  They did not.

Sharon:  They did. 

Dawn:  Well, damn.  I never knew they had to do that. 

Interviewer:  Was there anything interesting about this next scene in the staff room?

Sharon:  First I would like you to notice that this wheelchair is the very first one they gave to use for the reenactments that actually has the wheels in the front they use to balance the wheelchair.  The armrest still does not attach to the front frame of the seat like a real wheelchair does, but this was a huge improvement.  In the reenactments before, they had to tie a counterweight to keep the wheelchair from falling over. 

Interviewer:  Why wouldn’t they just get a real wheelchair?

Sharon:  That’s the question I was always asking.  All they would tell me was the person doing the research was really lazy. 

Interviewer:  Was there anything else interesting about the scene in the staff room?

Sharon:  No staff in the staff room for one thing and no students.  That place was so busy, we would never have a private conversation in there. 

Dawn:  The reenactment did not have the budget for extras.

Sharon:  And not a budget to recreate my office, which is where the real conversation took place. 

Dawn:  I used to like looking at your racing marathon trophies. 

Sharon:  I did put a few of them up so the students could see that my wheelchair, my real one that worked, did not limit me.  

Elizabeth:  Did you talk about how evil Candace was for making Dawn get that terrible haircut?

Sharon:  Like we did in the reenactment, Dawn looked in a mirror and realized her haircut did not look that bad.  It was pretty fashionable for the time. 

Dawn:  Once I realized that I actually looked good, it was a lot easier to face other students. 

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Sharon:  But we could not use that in the reenactment.  My message was rewritten to be the same as Elly Patterson’s with Elizabeth.

Elizabeth:  I hated that conversation.  I wanted to tell mom about Candace making Dawn get a haircut and then it was cigarettes, cigarettes, cigarettes.  Mom got to pretend she had known about the smoking all along, when everyone knew Michael squealed on me after he caught us smoking. 

Dawn:  Plus my mom smelled cigarette on me the moment I came home and I had confessed to her months before.  She called Mrs. Patterson and told her we had been smoking.

Elizabeth:  Typical mom.  She likes to save everything up and then blow up at you all at once.  I got the “Candace has power over you” lecture.  I learned to really hate that lecture.  Reenacting it was not much fun for me, but mom loved it.

Dawn:  Then the next day, Candace came up to you and said your sweater made you look chunky.  The sad part was that it was true, but Candace could not have picked a worse time to say it.

Elizabeth:  Right.  I was getting over wearing my mother’s oversized sweaters to school and she kept on saying, “I have a really nice sweater here.  Don’t you want to wear it?”  So, I have would have to wear it.

Dawn:  That’s the real power. 

Interviewer:  I think the story ended nicely with you both learning a valuable lesson.

Dawn:  Candace has pretty good fashion sense.

Elizabeth:  That’s right.  Even today, I will consult with Candace about what the latest trends are. 

Interviewer:  No, I mean that people only have power over you if you listen to what they say.

Elizabeth:  That’s what mom had wrong.  Not only is not listening to someone rude, but it’s not how society works.  As a school teacher, I have to listen to the students.

Dawn:  It’s what makes humanity tick. 

Interviewer:  So you disagree with the lesson in the reenactment?

Dawn:  Absolutely.  It’s terrible advice.

Elizabeth:  The worst.

Interviewer:  And what do you say about this, Mrs. Taylor.

Sharon:  I am so glad to see that these fine young women have learned what I tried to teach them and ignore the people who tried to have power over them.

Interviewer:  And that’s the end of the podcast on “Dawn Gets a Bad Haircut”  I would like to thank Elizabeth Caine, Dawn Enjo and Sharon Taylor for participating with us.