An ode to the scrunchie

It is not a hair tie. I repeat, it is NOT called a hair tie.

​I have a horrible sense of fashion. Do people have even have senses of fashion anymore? Maybe I'm old for using that phrase, considering I mostly wear whatever I see other people on the Internet wearing. Anyway, I dress like a sixteen-year-old girl. A really trashy one. A trashy teenager who thinks those baby t-shirts that say stuff like "99% Angel" or "I dig your boyfriend" are funny. I also rep the scrunchie.

I know, I know. American Apparel tried to bring the scrunchie back a few years ago, but I just don't think they got it. I mean, a scrunchie isn't sexy, and if you're going to wear something from American Apparel, the idea -- at least what I gather from the company's ads over the last decade -- is to look as fuckable or as just-got-fucked as possible. A scrunchie does not make one fuckable.

But in my own mind, I am a trendsetter. I think that if I do or say or (in this case) wear something enough, other people will start doing it too. This was my thinking behind bringing back the scrunchie. A couple of months ago, as my hair began to grow out of its Scarface-era Michelle Pfeiffer bob, I was suddenly hit with an achy nostalgia. I didn't just want to wear a regular Goody rubber band to hold up my ponytail. I wanted my old scrunchies back. I wanted to bring the scrunchie back.

Like everything else I've acquired over the last few years, I utilized Facebook to see if I could round up some scrunchies. Mine were all long gone, thrown away or given to Goodwill by my mother (who is, herself, a master at cleaning and disposing of her children's things and then vehemently denying the act or even the existence of said belongings). Within a month, five scrunchies arrived on my doorstep in a padded envelope, sent to me by my friend Karen who I met at Southglenn Mall in 1995. This is what Facebook rules at -- keeping you connected with your old mall friends, long after the mall itself has been demolished.