Lee Majors' Hair

When I was ten years old there was little, of a personal nature, that I wanted more than Lee Majors' hair. Not his actual hair, of course, but his hair style and type. It represented everything I wanted to be.

Let me explain.

When I was ten years old one of my favorite TV shows was The Six Million Dollar Man, starring, of course, Lee Majors. He played Steve Austin, the bionic man, who had lost his legs, an arm, and an eye in an accident and a government agency replaced these body parts with super powered body parts turning Steve Austin into a superhero. Steve Austin's version of superhero was always honest, intelligent, moral and kind. He obeyed authority when they were right and cleverly bypassed authority when they were wrong. He never killed unless he had to and he always looked good. Through it all, his hair was always masculine & rugged looking, and as all the hair product ads say today, manageable.

I loved almost all the superheroes, but he was one of my favorites because he, like Batman and the Green Lantern, was just an ordinary person, not a genetic mutant or a space alien. My hair, on the other hand, probably was a genetic mutant or a space alien. No matter how much I tried to get it to stay in place, parted and straight (like Lee Majors') it would go all wavy and thick and run all over the place. No matter how much combing or brushing, it wouldn't sit still, I looked more like a somewhat chubby version of the high voiced Barry Gibb, of the Bee Gees, than the strong, masculine, heroic Lee Majors.

It turns out that I wasn't the only 10-year old boy who wanted Lee Majors' hair. As I grew up I'd asked several of my friends if there was anyone they wanted to look like when they were young and a good proportion of men my age wanted to look like Lee Majors. He was the envy of young boys as Farrah Fawcett (and her hair) was for young girls of the 70's. It was kind of a perfect hair marriage when Lee Majors & Farrah Fawcett were actually married.