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I hate to be the one to point this out, but someone needs to do it. I'm referring to this whole hairdo thing. Granted, some people, like, oh say, Meg Ryan, for instance, can chop their locks into stringy, uneven, flippy, wispy, waif-like mops that appear to have been the result of a mean junior high sleepover prank, and yet miraculously still look fabulous. Others, like, for example, middle-aged news show personalities, cannot, or more precisely, and to the point, should not. When I see them, beaming at the camera as though they think they are still in their fresh, naive twenties, I just want to invite them to sit down with me and have a little heart to heart chat. But I can't so all that's left for me to do is think to myself, girlfriend, you are so going to hate that you fell head first into the old up-to-date fashion trap vat. One day, you are going to look at photos of your feather-duster-head do and wonder what in flaming blue blazes were you thinking. I know this because I have photos of my own coiffure train wrecks but at least my excuse is that I was young, and dumb.

You see, photos are so permanent and revealing. They expose, frozen for posterity, on glossy paper, our failings, bad choices and temporary insanity with a glaringly painful epiphinal truth. On the upside, I can almost chart my progress on my road to maturity by the hairstyles in the photographs of my mindless youth. At least, sometimes I can see progress.

I'll skip past the springy tightly-permed Harpo Marx-like do of my childhood, since my mother was actually responsible for that, and begin in my experimental, impressionable teen years with the beehive. This was a hairstyle so unique, it spawned several legendary tales of the urban genre, one of which involved roaches nesting in the ratted, molded, lacquered, unwashed updo. But, because the fashion pendulum always swings in a great wild arc we soon went from the rat's nest to the long straight, middle parted, flower-child, hippy look. I believe the Beetles are credited with ushering us into the long hair years, but Cher was certainly also our hair role model during this period. Since I notice she now prefers pink, beaded, glittery Cleopatra wigs, I'm rather relieved to note she no longer occupies this lofty position of influence.

For a short period of time, and regrettably, during my final year in high school, the square pageboy was the rage. My senior picture is a fine example of this milestone of hairstyle evolution. Indeed, what was I thinking? It looks as though I'm wearing large earmuffs. And not only that but I vividly recall the pain involved in producing this classic coif of hair coaxed into an unnatural shape. Why did I not know that brush rollers leave hundreds of little holes in one's head when one is sleeping on them? I'm lucky my brain did not leak out. Again, I can console myself with the rationale that I had only just begun my journey to adulthood and could not be held accountable as yet for hairstyle choice.

Then, mercifully leaping past a half-dozen unmemorable do's of the following decade, I find myself staring back dumbly, in a snap shot, all grinny with ignorance and annoyingly proud of the wings shooting out of the side of my head. Once again…what could I have been thinking? One thing is for sure, I wasn't considering a day down the road, looking at those flanged Mercurial appendages and wondering if I had made any progress whatsoever toward maturity by my late twenties.

And then, the fashion pendulum determined we would go from straight and flipped back to the all over, layered curly gypsy and "fro". Obviously blinded by the moment, we thought we were not only styling, we were Urban Cowboys and Flash Dancers. This evolved somehow to the short-front, long-back helmet years, ala Carol Brady Bunch.

By now, you should be getting the point. Hair fashion is really a cruel and fickle friend, if a friend at all and I'm not so sure but that trend is concocted by evil designers who actually hate women and love to see us swept away into whatever diabolical style they can convince us we look divine in, which isn't all that difficult a task, might I frankly add. I can visualize a secret society of stylists who meet every five years, like the mysterious "Color Board", an elite group that determines the colors we use to decorate with. Do they gather in some remote all-inclusive seaside resort to debate and create the next absurd hairstyle, applauding and laughing raucously at the joke about to be perpetrated on us?

Perhaps it is only my age showing but I am starting to realize that the choices seem to be getting worse with time, which leads me to believe they hate us even more than they used to. I don't see this as a good sign, overall, because it also tells me women are not getting smarter and more discerning, but rather we are getting more like our younger selves, foolishly willing to be convinced we look great in whatever hairstyle du jour that is chosen for us, so long as some movie star is sporting it. Adding salt to the open wound, we spend enormous sums of money and not a small amount of time adorning ourselves with these ridiculous styles. And like the clueless naked Emperor, we strut and smile for the camera, imagining that we are hip, chic and bad to the bone. Good grief.

Is it possible that the path to maturity really is a circle and not a straight line as we have supposed?