LS #8, Karen's Haircut

I told my sister she could pick which book I would do next, and she immediately told me to do the one where Karen gets a mullet. She has good taste. This book is awesome and the illustrations are killer. If you only ever read one Little Sister book it should be this one.

Here's the cover. Karen doesn't look too happy, but the hairstylist looks quite pleased with herself. "Business in the front, party in the back, kid!"

The book starts with Karen playing Lovely Ladies with Nancy and feeling ugly. She doesn't like her glasses, and she thinks her two top teeth look like rabbit teeth, and then she loses the teeth on either side of the top teeth and thinks she looks like a freak. She's trying to play Lovely Ladies with Hannie, but she just feels too ugly. Hannie suggests that maybe Karen should get her hair cut or something, which Karen thinks is a great idea. Hannie says that then Karen will look good for Hannie's upcoming wedding to Scott Hsu who lives down the street. Pretending to get married, is this really a thing? Outside of Stoneybrook? I mean there were a few kids in my elementary school who would say they were boyfriend and girlfriend, but that mostly meant that they would play together on the playground. I don't even remember any hand holding. If they'd tried to stage a wedding and get their friends to come we all would have thought they were loco. Anyway Hannie says that if Karen gets a nice haircut she can be a bridesmaid in the wedding instead of just the wedding photographer.

Karen runs home to ask Daddy if she can get her hair cut and get a manicure and a pedicure at Gloriana's House of Hair, the new salon in town. Daddy doesn't agree to the pedi, but after he talks to Mommy, they make an appointment for Karen to get a haircut and a manicure on Tuesday after school. Karen's super excited, and she even gets a fancy barrette from the Tooth Fairy for her two lost teeth.

Mommy takes Karen and Andrew to the salon after school on Tuesday. Karen is annoyed that Andrew has to come along. She wants to feel like a grown up who doesn't have a four year old brother, and she is afraid Andrew will wreck or break something. I bet Andrew is annoyed too, because waiting around for someone to get their hair cut isn't all that fun.

First, Karen gets her manicure. She picks bright pink polish. Then Gloriana starts cutting her hair. Karen brought in a picture of the cut she wants: shoulder length hair with bangs. Shortly after Gloriana starts cutting, Mommy comes over to say that Andrew is getting bored and she's going to take him for a short walk. Karen feels super grown up, except after Mommy leaves, Karen realizes that Gloriana is not giving her the haircut she wanted, but she's seven, so she's too intimidated to say anything. Mommy comes back just as Gloriana is finishing up cutting Karen's hair into a mullet. She asks suspiciously if this is what Karen wanted, and Karen says no, but Gloriana claims that the mullet is the latest style and very fashionable.

Karen doesn't want to go to school the next day, because she's afraid the kids will tease her, and they do. Ricky starts calling her "The Bride of Frankenstein" and the other boys start doing it too. I mean I get that they're just being little assholes, but I don't see a lot of reason why Bride of Frankenstein would be the first thing that popped to mind when a classmate comes to school with a mullet.

The Bride of Frankenstein's iconic hairdo

Not even remotely similar, except I guess hair is involved

This book, by the way, has half-page illustrations sprinkled throughout, which makes more sense to me than the full page ones in the later books that are drawn on half the page and empty at the top or just scribbles at the bottom.

The worst part, though, is that Hannie announces that Karen is completely fug and now cannot be a bridesmaid.  Karen goes home and cries and decides that even though she can't do anything about her hair, she can be glamorous. She announces that she has changed her name to Tiffanie and paints her nails sparkly gold. She wears an assload of plastic bracelets and rings and an ankle bracelet. Hannie says she still can't be in the wedding. Karen goes over to Nancy's house and Nancy shows her the dress she is going to wear to Hannie's wedding, which Karen was not invited to. Really? Even if the kids in my grade school had decided to get married, if they tried to make us dress up to attend, nobody would have gone along with it. Karen's classmates don't remember to call her Tiffanie, so she decides that maybe it's too different from Karen, and changes to Krystal.  She sneaks some discarded makeup of Mommy's to school and starts wearing lipstick and blush every day. She claims that her friends think she's glamorous, except for Hannie, who pointedly says, "You still can't be in my wedding, Karen." Karen tries out other names, including Gazelle (seriously), Desiree, and Chantal. She also starts wearing six ribbons in her hair.

This is the best thing. It was so hard not to scan every mullet-stration in this book, too, I'll tell you what. Hannie tells Karen that her wedding is on Sunday and Karen is still not invited. Karen says she'll come anyway, since she'll be at her dad's that weekend.

Karen's playing outside on Saturday when she sees Hannie go flying off her bike. She runs over and helps Hannie into her house, where it turns out that the bike accident knocked Hannie's front teeth out. Hannie wails that now she is too ugly to marry Scott. Hey, Hannie? You're at least fifteen years too young, too.

Daddy sends Karen over to Hannie's after lunch, and Karen goes, because she doesn't want to explain to Daddy about the fight she and Hannie are having. Scott shows up at the same time and they go up to Karen's room. Hannie is upset and shows Scott the spaces in her mouth and says again that she's now too ugly to marry him. I think these kids in Stoneybrook take losing teeth a little too seriously. It happens to every kid, and really, it doesn't make you ugly. Scott tells Hannie to stop being a drama queen, because he doesn't care what she looks like. "I'm not marrying your face. I'm marrying you," he says, and as he leaves he adds, "See you tomorrow at our wedding!"

Karen tells Hannie she didn't want to come over but Daddy made her, and Hannie admits she's been being a total snot to Karen and apologizes. It's kind of a half-assed apology, including such gems as, "It's terrible to think you look ugly. It's even worse to think people won't like you because of that," and, "I figured out that just because I didn't like your hair and teeth didn't mean I couldn't like you." Hannie says Karen can be her bridesmaid after all, and Karen plans to wear her pink party dress and party shoes. David Michael is performing the ceremony, and he wears a suit. Hannie's brother wears a suit, too, and her sister is dressed up to be the flower girl, and Scott and his brother are wearing suits, and Hannie is wearing her mother's wedding dress. I don't even know. How do you get permission to wear your mom's wedding dress in a backyard wedding at the age of seven? How do you convince 7 to 9 year old boys to wear suits? How do you convince your mother to be your wedding photographer? Also Kristy is one of the guests. David Michael performs a ceremony that ends exactly the same way as the one in Kristy's Big Day, which is to say, he says that they can kiss, and both kids shriek and are utterly disgusted by this.

On Monday Karen sees that a couple of fifth graders have also gotten mullets, and her classmates are totally impressed that Karen started a style that the big kids copied. Then at recess, as the kids are talking about Hannie's wedding, Ricky pulls Karen aside and asks her to marry him. She considers saying no, because this is Yicky Ricky who used to throw spitballs at her, but he was the only one who remembered all her stupid fake names, so she decides she'll marry him.