I am taking this week's Illustration Friday theme "Metropolitan" quite literally here and humbly present to you The Metropolitan Museum. Or more particularly, a guard at The Metropolitan. I've dubbed her Flossy after one of the Bobbsey Twins. It's likely not her name. I don't know what her real name is... I was too intimidated by her hairdo to get close enough to look at her name tag.
Flossy's Do is not so much a hairstyle as a type of architecture, a monument. Coiffure, updo, beehive, bouffant, mane, mop... none of these words seem big enough to describe the wonder that perches atop Flossy's head.
This is not hair that happens by accident, people. O, no. This is hair that takes great pains and planning, specially manufactured and purchased hairstyling tools and products. This is hair measured in terms of tensile strength. This is hair that might possibly require girders and beams and the engineering genuis, construction talent and tireless maintenance of an entire village of Doozers (remember the Doozers?!! As in Fraggle Rock ? Remember them?! I loved Sprocket with my whole being.) In fact, it looked as if it might be housing an entire village of Doozers.
Barely taller than my own five feet, even in her enormously chunky (and surely comfortable) orthopedic shoes (Omigawd � the SHOES! Like giant black patent leather Kleenex boxes or blocks of concrete), Flossy's Do easily added another 35 inches. 35 heavily laquered and black, black, black inches of follicular magnificence that pretty much eclipsed all the incredible art around her (for me anyway... my obsession with Flossy's Do may be singular in its depth and breadth).
Okay, now I know it may sound like I'm making fun of Glossy Flossy here, but really, I'm not. I seriously admire her willingness to make a statement, a big bold 35 inch statement. Actually, Flossy's Do is not so much a statement as a glorious exclaimation, announced from the top of her otherwise extraordinarily ordinary self with the authority and urgency of an air raid siren. I mean, you'd have to see it for yourself to really understand the scope of it. Nefertiti has nothing on Flossy. I am utterly fascinated by her and her tower of hair. How did she arrive at this styling solution? How much earlier does she have to get up every morning to arrange this structure? How does she sleep with that on her head?
The Handsome Guy didn't seem to take any notice of her at the time (unlike me, gawking at the art installation on her head through the various plexiglass security cases surrounding elabroately wrought medival artifacts), but when I showed him this sketch, he fairly shouted "I remember her! O, man! That was some 'do!"
Amazing. People like Flossy fascinate me to no end and let me tell you, New York City's Metropolitan Museum is full of fascinating people. Oh, and alot of art too. And a whole whack of cherubs. Cherubs, cherubs everywhere! What up with all the cherubs?!
P.S. This is not my offical Metropolitan Museum entry. That's still to come. And it will be accompanied by...wait for it... photos! Yay!
P.P.S ordinarily my legs are covered with bruises and scratches from my daily rambles with the wolf. Today, however, after a vigourous encounter with a particularly grabsome raspberry bush, my legs are so badly mangled that Jack fairly shrieked at me "Ohmigawd! What did you do to your legs?! You look like you were fleeing a bear!" It's pretty gruesome, folks. I look like I have a bad case of cat-scratch fever and have been rolling in poison ivy to boot. Not pretty.
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