My aunt Betty never forgave me for having long hair.
I didn’t realize this at first. Like most schoolgirls in the 1970’s, my idea of beauty was based on the flowing tresses of Cher, Jacklyn Smith, Lynda Carter, Farrah Fawcett-Majors, et al. Feathered, long length, braided, coiled, it didn’t matter. Unless one was fortunate enough to look cute with a Dorothy Hamill wedge cut (which I wasn’t), the standard for suburban white girls was long, shiny, preferably straight hair in one’s natural color.
This was actually a decent look on me back in the day. My hair has a slight natural wave if it’s short, but otherwise is straight, silky-fine, and an acceptable shade of medium brown. I never succeeded in growing it much past my waist, but succeed I did, and it looked quite nice. I also learned various ways of braiding, pinning, twisting, and otherwise getting my hair off my shoulders, from a nice 1950’s chignon to a Victorian psyche knot, and I got plenty of compliments from friends and acquaintances alike.
This was not enough for my aunt. Despite photographic evidence that my mother’s, Betty’s own sister, had once had flowing curls, any hint that I could grow my hair past my collarbone was Unacceptable, Unadult, and downright Subversive. “You really should get it cut,” she’d say. “I’ll even pay for it!” And no matter how many times I would politely decline, six months later she’d ask me when I was planning to cut my hair.
As I’m sure you can imagine, this rapidly went from “amusing quirk” to “annoying obsession” to “BETTY, LEAVE ME ALONE IT’S MY HAIR NOT YOURS WHY DO YOU CARE?” She never was able to give me an answer that went much beyond “because you’re over twenty-five and you’ll look better with short hair,” and never mind that I have always looked about ten years younger than my age so she was basically asking me to look like a respectable matron when I appeared to be just out of high school.
As bad as this was, Betty’s other obsession was worse. You see, it wasn’t enough that she wanted me to cut my crowning glory, oh no no. And it certainly wasn’t her occasional request to “try a body wave, they’ve changed the chemicals, it won’t make your hair frizz the way the ones you had in 1976 and 1983 did, cross my heart and hope to become an exotic dancer!” I became very good at a) pointing out that pinning my hair up was not dissimilar to cutting it off, and b) deploying pictures of myself with what appeared to be a twelve inch Brill-O pad instead of a ponytail sticking out from the back of my skull.
No, the worst was that Betty thought I’d look just dandy if I had my hair cut short and permed and frosted.
At the age of 25.
Even though her one experience with frosting had been a Disaster So Epic I Wrote About It:
...And so Betty, whether out of a desire to keep up with the blown-dry, middle-aged panic, or a little of both, sallied forth to Andy's and, without telling anyone but Mum (she sure didn't tell me), had her naturally dark chestnut hair transformed in a veritable croquembouche of silver, platinum, and pale, pale blonde streaks, swirls, and poufs.
I don't recall what her brothers thought, although it's likely that Oscar, her usual chauffeur, shook his head and chewed his peppermint Chiclets rather than argue. Lou, less polite and more profane, muttered something about her being a damned fool as usual and stalked out of the room to wash his hands. I stared for a moment, then lied and told her it looked great. Mum, who had learned long since not to pick fights she couldn't win, contented herself with a terse nod and went back to making dinner.
Betty, who had thought that giving herself the gray hair that Nature had kindly refrained from unleashing on her quite yet would make her the belle of Pleasant Hills, was less than pleased to get such a graphic preview of the inevitable. That is why on Saturday, less than a week after undergoing the long, dramatic, and expensive procedure that transformed her from a youthful fifty to a dead ringer for one of weird spray painted sprays of pampas grass that used to adorn furniture showroom windows, Betty went back to Andy and paid him even more money to dye her hair back to its natural brown.
After all the time, mockery, and expense Betty’s fashionably frosted hair cost her, one would think she would have shrieked, crossed herself, and thrown several gallons of holy water at any hair salon that so much as advertised the idea of frosted hair, let alone suggested that her only niece do likewise. Then again, we are talking about my aunt Betty, who lived according to her own peculiar norms instead of the concepts the rest of us are stuck with.
It didn’t matter how often I’d remind her of how much she hated having her hair frosted, or how it had instantly turned from chic to dowdy. Nor did me bringing up that I was a good two decades younger than she’d been back in the day, or that I was starting to get my own faint but unmistakable gray streak along my part line. Betty wanted me to “look like an adult,” which was annoying when I was twenty-five and downright insulting when I was forty, and that was that.
That I finally had my hair cut to my shoulders a few years after she finally succumbed to her own stubborn refusal to take her Tamoxifen is one of my life’s great ironies. Worse, when I did decide to get a professional dye job instead of messing around with Clairol/crushed Mexican sap-sucking beetles/Kool-Aide/Garnier Nutrisse/henna/sugar of lead/whatever? I had my hairdresser use a warm mocha demi-glaze that turned the gray streak into softly burnished highlights instead of having it frosted.
So much for Betty’s fondest wish.
I admit that from time to time I do miss having my hair long enough to braid or put up into a bun or blow back from my face in glorious flowing locks whenever the summer breezes waft through the Last Homely Shack East of the Manhan. I don’t miss looking like an aging radical with six inches of irregularly trimmed split ends, though, which was what was starting to happen a few years back. My political views are not determined by the length or color of my hair, and bad cess to anyone who tries to tell me otherwise. My hair, my choice, and that is that.
As for whether I now “look like an adult” thanks to my hair…well, anyone who’s seen me at the grocery store wearing a Captain Marvel sweater or dressing up as Squirrel Girl from Halloween would certainly beg to differ.
So would the subjects of tonight’s diary. This sisterly septet, who were once the toast of the vaudeville circuit and immensely wealthy thanks to their magnificent manes, would be appalled by the mere idea of a respectable woman having short hair. They and their devoted customers truly believed that a woman’s crowning glory was her hair, which ideally should be glossy, wavy, and as long as possible, no matter how long that eventually was.
That they themselves would eventually boast hair so long that each needed a servant tasked solely with keeping her mistress’s hair smooth, silky, and untangled was the cost of doing business and staying in the public eye. As long as Fashion decreed that long hair was la mode, the sisters were happy to keep theirs so long it trailed on the ground when they walked.
And then, just when it seemed that they had secured not only their own fortune but those of their entire family for generations to come, Fashion proved fickle, several million Bernices bobbed their hair, and it all came crashing down….
Tonight I bring you not books, but yet another in my occasional profile of a Family So Weird It’s Good. Previous installments included the legendary Cherry Sisters, a vaudeville act so bad that actress Jenny Slate skewered them on Drunk History, and the Collyer Brothers, whose trash-stuffed house should be an example to everyone featured on Hoarders. Both these clans are reasonably well known thanks to litigation (Cherry v. Des Moines Leader) and literature (Homer and Langley), but the now-obscure ladies tonight are equally peculiar, albeit far, far more hirsute:
The Amazing Seven Sutherland Sisters: A Biography of America’s First Celebrity Models, by Branford N. Stickney, is the only book-length treatment of the Sutherlands, even though their story would seem ripe for a neo-Victorian steampunk version where they whip their hair back and forth to fight crime and defeat mysterious forces that seek to take over the hair products market. Just why this is I’m not sure, nor do I know why the Sutherlands (and the Cherrys, and possibly Madame C.J. Walker as their espionage controller) aren’t the subject of a web comic.
All I do know is that my aunt Betty would most certainly not approve of the Sutherlands’ vast quantities of hair, nor the amount of time and effort necessary to keep them being several fast of scraggly, wiry, messy split ends. I mean, if she couldn’t even take my modest attempt to look like Cher, how she possibly have endured the glory that was the Sutherlands?
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The Seven Sutherland Sisters were once famous.
It’s not hard to see why. Their story – their rise from rags to riches thanks to talent, hard work, and a patent medicine guaranteed to work – was the classic American success story. The only difference was the Sutherlands’ rise was based not so much on their considerable musical talents, or even their physical appearance. No, it was based on something unusual even for the Victorian era: enough hair among the seven of them to upholster several sofas, a brace of deeply stuffed armchairs, and atleast two or three gross of Victorian mourning jewelry.
You think I jest? Even after seeing the main illustration to this diary? Just feast your eyes upon the sisters at the height of their fame:
That’s thirty-five feet of hair you’re looking at it, ranging in length from the glorious seven foot swath boasted by one sister to the comparatively modest yard and change that adorned another. Their father, Rev. Fletcher Sutherland, claimed that it was thanks to a secret formula he had developed that would grow hair on anything short of a billiard ball, and for only a few dollars even the baldest of men would be doing a fine imitation of a longhaired cat.
The true story was, of course, somewhat more complicated. Rev. Fletcher, who had once worked for President Buchanan, had based his formula on a foul smelling ointment his late, lamented wife had smeared on their children’s scalps to make sure their hair was thick and strong. Whether the ointment actually worked or not, the reek was so bad that the sisters were basically shunned at school, to the point that they would hide in the woods when visitors came to avoid being asked about the horrible odor.
Their mother’s early death may haved eprived the girls of a parent but it freed them from the ointment ,and soon their natural musical talents manifested themselves. One sister, Naomi, was particularly gifted, and by the time she was thirteen the sisters and their brother, Charles, were a well-known act in the upstate New York area.
By the early 1880’s the Sutherlands had begun to take their act on their road, with appearances as far south as Florida. It was little wonder that the Barnum & Bailey Circus signed them to a contract in 1882, and soon enough their combination of fine singing and stunning hair had made them both famous and very, very rich.
The riches were not solely thanks to the circus, oh no. For it was around that time that Rev. Fletcher, no fool he, began selling hair tonic, scalp wash, and dandruff remedies allegedly based on his secret formula. Testimonials from the formerly bald/dandruff-covered began flooding in, and by the early 1980’s the Seven Sutherland Sisters’ hair products and concert fees had earned the family nearly $3 million, or about $68 million in today’s money.
Let that sink in: thanks partly to their talents but largely to their hair, the Sutherland Sisters made$68 million, or almost enough for them to join the ranks of the lesser robber barons, in less than a decade. It’s little wonder that they soon built a fine house on the old family homestead, hired seven separate maids to dress and comb and trim their luxurious tresses, and generally began whooping it up as much as seven carefully raised Victorian girls could, each in her own way:
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Sarah, the oldest, parlayed her fine soprano voice, her skill as a pianist, and her three and a half feet of deep brown hair to a successful career as a music teacher. She also led the family concerts and ran the business after Rev. Fletcher went to his eternal reward.
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Victoria, the second sister, had the longest hair (seven-plus feet), a taste for fine jewelry and young men, and a lovely mezzo voice. She also had an independent streak that kept her single until she was well past the dangers of childbirth, when she married a man thirty years her junior and moved to a nice house in New York.
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Isabella, the third sister, had six feet of wiry black hair, a contralto so deep she was may actually have been a tenor, and a secret: she probably wasn’t a Sutherland Sister at all. Fine-boned, slender, and dreamy, she was rumored to a cousin Rev. Fletcher and his wife had adopted, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that she ended up marrying (twice), each time to a much younger man.
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Grace was the next sister, was an elegant, witty alto with five feet of magnificent dark red hair. She outlived the rest of her family, and if her constant efforts to keep the peace ultimately failed, at least she tried.
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Naomi, the fifth sister, was that rarest of creatures: a true female bass. Her deep, resonant voice invariably brought down the house, and her stunning five-plus feet of curly dark hair was reportedly so lush she could literally cloth herself in it. She eventually married, had three children, and by all reports was the kindest and most decent of the entire brood.
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Dora, an alto who was the family beauty, came next. She was the only one whose hair length varied much (she’d occasionally trim it to a mere four feet from its usual six and a half), and her flirtatious smile and sweetly turned up nose led to her being touted as “the cute one” when the Sutherlands played Broadway. She later moved to Canada and did very well indeed.
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Mary, the last and least talented of the Sutherlands, was both hairy (six feet, all brown) and deeply troubled. Prone to frequent tantrums, with a wavery alto voice and a tendency to bail on the stage act, Mary may well have been bipolar, although doctors at the time thought it was simply the weight of all that hair weakening her brain.
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Charles, the one boy in the family, had a fine baritone singing voice and (of course) wonderfully thick, rich hair. However, he wasn’t a woman and thus could not grow his hair down to the floor, and soon he became Sir Not Appearing In This Diary.
Making that kind of money should have been more than enough to ensure that the Sutherlands would be set for generations to come...but a combination of personal disasters, an inability to handle money, and being on the wrong side of fashion history were enough to derail their plains. Although some of them (notably Dora and Sarah) had a head for business, their best efforts could not prevent a series of disasters from striking:
- One of the sisters’ (much younger) husband committed suicide without warning while on tour.
- Another sister died young, and despite recruiting a non-Sutherland to take her place in the act, the family never quite recovered from the loss.
- Most of the family had a tendency to spend money as fast as it came in on oddities such as pet funerals, extravagant clothes and jewelry, pet obituaries, mausoleums for the dead husband (though not for the Sutherlands themselves), pet food, and so on.
- Mary’s illness required constant care, which was not cheap.
- The sisters began to die off or became too old to tour, one by one, and without them and their hair on constant public display, women turned to less expensive, less fussy, and less time consuming ways of styling their hair.
- Summer and winter wardrobes for the pets that had managed to avoid becoming the subject of obituaries that year.
- Their huge mansion proved to be an even huger money pit, requiring enormous sums to keep it, the grounds, and all those pets in good condition.
- A chemical analysis of the famous hair tonic revealed that it was mix of witch hazel extract, bay rum, and trace amounts of salt, magnesia, and hydrochloric acid, all of which should have sold for a few cents instead of $1.50 a bottle.
Despite this, the Sutherlands were still raking in enough money that they should have been fine...except that thanks to the suffrage movement, the Great War, and the shifting winds of Fashion Herself, women began cutting their hair. And not just the occasional trim to keep it healthy, oh no. Starting around 1920, what had been a fad for shoulder length (or shorter) bobs among radicals and war workers became the norm. Long, flowing, elegantly styled hair was Out, shingle bobs were In, and by the early 1920’s the remaining Sutherland Sisters were about one inch from doing a Wile E. Coyote straight over the fiscal cliff.
One possible solution would have to sell the rights to their story to Hollywood. Many celebrities of the Gaslight Era had done so and earned enough money to live comfortably. Even that was denied to the Sutherlands, though, due to a car crash that killed poor Dora and left the movie studies chary of having anything to do with Mary (still alive, still unstable) and Grace (never a businesswoman). By the mid-1930’s they had to give up the crumbling mansion, with Mary committed permanently to an asylum and Grace eking out a living as best she could. What was left of the company folded, the homestead and most company records were lost in a fire, and by the time poor Grace died at the age of 92 in the mid-1940’s, the Sutherland Sisters were all but forgotten.
Fortunately for history, Seven Sutherland Sisters advertising copy, photographs, and hair tonic bottles turn up occasionally in antique shops and on Ebay. Even better, local historian Brandon Stickney wrote what is probably the definitive account of the Sisters, The Amazing Seven Sutherland Sisters: A Biography of America’s First Celebrity Models. Those wishing more information should check it out, particularly if they have an urge to grow their hair to Sutherlandish lengths and take their act on the road.
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Have you ever heard of the Sutherland Sisters? Tried to grow your hair long? Had a cut/frosting/perm that went horribly wrong? Tonight is Saturday, so come to the hair salon and share….
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