Topping It Off

Wear a shorthair wig, save hassles with the fuzz, draft boards, reserves and save hair. Call Underground Wig Movement, 942-2707. --Ad in the Quicksilver Times, Washington, D.C.

Aesthetically, they look like something Grandfather wouldn't wear to a senior citizens' frolic. But when you're a young guy trying to get along with the Establishment, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And the hard truth of the matter is, Establishment standards specify short hair for men.

Taking the matter into his own hands, a long-haired hairdresser named Bob Woodford, 31, started making shorthair wigs for America's harried longhairs. "When it doesn't make sense to have long hair in certain situations," he says, "you have two alternatives: you can cut it and wait two years for it to grow back or you can cover it up with a wig. Take a guy in the Army reserve. If he's going into drill for two days, why should he have to change his image for the other 28 days? The sergeants don't realize that his girl won't look at him with short hair." To help remedy this, Woodford bought a lady's wig, trimmed it down to a respectable male length, ran that ad in the underground Times and discovered a need for his product.

One fellow (who spent one year, one month and 26 days growing shoulder-length locks) tucked his flowing tresses under one of Woodford's wigs and snagged a job working for a gas-station owner who didn't want "longhairs hanging around." Another customer was in traffic court and, figuring that "I'd rather be prosecuted for my transgression against the Virginia traffic code than be persecuted for being a freak," he invested in one of Woodford's wigs. He didn't beat the rap, but the arresting officer said: "Well, one good thing came out of this: you got your hair cut." Another bought his wig so that customs agents would not search him for marijuana after a trip to South America.

Woodford views his anti-Establishmentarian invention with a certain amount of humanitarianism, well-laced with some simple cynicism: "It's great for certain situations when it's unprofitable to have hair, or at least too much hair. Since what some employers care about is appearance, that's what they get. Maybe that's all they deserve."

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