Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Golden Plunger Awards (27 page)

When it comes to dreads and their upkeep, myths abound. One of the most common is that dreadlocks are all unkempt and dirty. In reality, most dreadheads are meticulous about hair care and wash their locks three to four times a week. It’s important to find shampoos that don’t leave residues behind, though, because those residues (whether fragrance or moisture) can trap grease and dirt in the dreads.

Another myth is that dreads can be formed simply by allowing hair to “go natural.” Not so—if you do that, you’ll just get big, flat, knotted mats. The one thing every lock-wearer needs is some dread wax (usually beeswax), because it helps keep dreads looking neat and not knotty.

Once you’re done with your dreads, you needn’t shave your head. Most people just let them grow for a couple of months and then cut them off, leaving a few inches of hair. But people who don’t want to sacrifice any of their hair’s length can spend a few hours soaking their hair in oil and working out the locks.

There’s no Guinness world record for the longest dreads, but Ian Barron of Scotland grew his dreadlocks from age 15 to age 32 and then had them cut off when they reached 3½ feet long—and he raised 1,000£ for charity in the process.

To get real dreadlocks requires time and thought. As many people who love locks say, “It’s not a hairstyle, it’s a lifestyle.” Getting hair to lock on to itself so that it forms even, attractive coils takes effort.

To get locked, you should definitely have a comb and some wax handy, and there are so many different ways of getting hair into locks—everything from back combing to perming to twisting—that
you can probably find one to suit you. There’s even one way of creating dreadlocks that involves rubbing hair repeatedly in a circular motion with a wool sweater, though experts warn that this method won’t create the nicest-looking locks. Most sites and salons that specialize in dreadlocks can suggest reliable methods.

Once your hair has been sectioned and knotted to a greater or lesser extent (depending on the hair’s length and texture), you need to take care of your “baby dreads” . . . waxing, twisting, and encouraging them along. The process can take weeks, months, or even more than a year. So it’s definitely not a style for the fad-oriented. (Those people are disparagingly referred to as “rentadreads.”) But once you’ve got the dreads, you’ll be in good company, sporting a hairstyle that’s adorned kings, queens, warriors, musicians, and even those counterculture kids up the street.

The Pompadour:
Its name might be genteelly French—the high-tressed Madame de Pompadour was Louis XVI’s favorite mistress. But this hairstyle’s roots are in rockabilly. In the 1950s, edgy musicians started using hair cream to sculpt a ’do with slicked-back sides and a curled-over top; the more comb tracks, the better. It may not have made Elvis a King, but it definitely was his crowning touch.

The Beehive:
Sculpted to resemble the nosecone of a B-52 Stratofortress bomber plane (hence its nickname “B-52,” and the hairstyles of the 1980s band with that name), the beehive was born in the late ’50s and had its heyday the following decade, but “big hair” has survived in the South, along with big cans of hairspray. Margaret Vinci Heldt, an Elmhurst, Illinois, native and the creator of the beehive, once told CNN that she hoped the most famous contemporary beehive queen, Marge Simpson, had been named after her. (She wasn’t.)

King Tut

Tutankhaten was born in about 1341 B.C. His parents were Akhenaten (the pharaoh of Egypt) and Kiya, one of his wives. When Akhenaten died in 1332 B.C., Tutankhaten—at nine years old—became the king of Egypt. On being crowned, Tutankhaten married Ankhesenamun—his half-sister and the daughter of Akhenaten and his main wife, Nefertiti.

King Tut didn’t make many (if any) important decisions, but his reign is notable for a measure enacted by his advisors. Official state business was conducted by Horemheb, the commander of the Egyptian military, and by Ay, his top advisor (who was also Ankhesenamun’s grandfather).

Tut’s father, Akhenaten, had tried to replace the ancient Egyptian religious system of gods (including Ra, the sun god) with a single, previously minor god (Aten, a light-giving force that was an aspect of Ra). In fact, Akhenaten named his son Tutankhaten because it meant “the living image of Aten.” Two years into Tut’s reign, Horemheb and Ay restored the traditional religion, built new temples to worship Ra, and changed the young pharaoh’s name from Tutankhaten to the more widely known Tutankhamen, which means “living image of Amun.” (Amun was the god of air.)

In 1323 B.C., when he was just 18 years old, King Tutankhamen died. He left no heirs, so Ay, his top advisor and de facto ruler of
Egypt, became the official ruler of Egypt . . . after he married Tut’s wife and his own granddaughter, Ankhesenamun.

Because his reign was short and uneventful, Tut’s mummified body (inside an ornate sarcophagus) was relegated to a small, out-of-the-way tomb in the Valley of the Kings, home to all the pharaohs’ tombs. Over the years, stone chips that had crumbled off other tombs buried Tut’s. When the tombs in the Valley of the Kings were looted during the 11th century B.C., Tut’s was spared because nobody knew it was there.

So how did Tut become the most famous ancient Egyptian in the western world? The 1922 discovery of his nearly entirely intact tomb by British researcher Howard Carter was a major world event. Carter and his team took home lots of treasures for the British Museum, including Tut’s sarcophagus, a silver trumpet, lots of jewelry, three golden coffins, and a throne. Carter removed Tut’s burial mask—still
the
iconic image of the pharaoh and ancient Egypt as a whole—by peeling it off with scalding hot knives.

The team also unwrapped the mummified corpse to remove the jewelry from his body. Tut had a large indentation in his head, apparently the result of a head trauma, which fueled speculation that he’d been murdered, most likely by the power-hungry Ay.

Some key details about Tut’s life and death came to light in 2005. A team of Egyptian scientists led by Dr. Zahi Hawass and radiologist Ashraf Selim performed a series of CT scans on King Tut’s mummified corpse. They were able to decipher what the boy king looked like: he was 5’11”, had an overbite, an elongated skull, and a slightly cleft palate. The team also discovered that the head trauma wasn’t caused by an injury—it was the result of a hole being drilled into his skull after death, likely by an embalmer who’d removed Tut’s brain.

Selim and Hawass also pieced together how King Tut died. The scan revealed a series of fractures to his left thigh bone, likely caused during a fall, probably from a horse. Tut got an infection
from the open wound and died of blood poisoning. Gangrene killed the pharaoh in just a few days. There was no evidence of foul play.

Today’s King Tut’s body rests in its tomb in a museum in the Valley of the Kings. The corpse is unwrapped and sits in a climate-controlled glass case. Also on display: a computerized re-creation of what Tut’s face actually looked like, based on the 2005 CT scans.

Tutankhamen was pharaoh of Egypt from the ages of 9 to 18. But he was just
born
into it. Here are some other young people who also did some remarkable things between those ages.

 

9:
Shirley Temple was already a millionaire.

9:
Future Admiral David Farragut (who coined the phrase “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead”) joined the U.S. Navy as a midshipman.

10:
Stevie Wonder signed with Motown Records.

11:
Keyboardist Herbie Hancock performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

13:
Mario Andretti started racing cars.

14:
Nadia Comaneci achieved a perfect 10 in gymnastics at the 1976 Summer Olympics.

15:
Isacc Asimov entered Columbia University.

16:
Albert Einstein began researching what became the theory of relativity.

17:
Pele scored the game-winning goal for Brazil in the World Cup title match.

18:
Samantha Larson completed her quest to climb the tallest mountains on all seven continents.

Häagen-Dazs

The Bronx is home to Yankee Stadium and a world-famous zoo, but it’s not legendary for being the birthplace of a popular ice cream. It should be. Reuben Mattus, a Polish immigrant peddled his family’s homemade ice cream to Bronx restaurants and stores for more than 30 years before he came up with his fortune-making idea for the super-premium ice cream he christened with a nonsensical name.

He introduced Häagen-Dazs in 1961, and at first, it came in only three flavors: vanilla, chocolate, and coffee. His ice cream was made with real (versus artificial) flavors and premium ingredients like real cream and expensive Belgian chocolate. He also added more butterfat and incorporated less air to create a richer, denser ice cream. Reuben and his wife, Rose, invented the name while sitting on their couch at home; they thought a foreign named would give the ice cream an air of sophistication and elegance.

Although it sounds spurious, Rose Mattus noted that the Danish-sounding name “Häagen-Dazs” was inspired by Duncan Hines—if you switch the “D” and the “H,” you come close to the ice cream’s name. In her 2004 memoir,
The Emperor of Ice Cream
, Rose also revealed that she and her husband chose Denmark for their ice cream’s “home country” because they respected how well the Danes had treated Jews during World War II.

Convinced they had a winner, Reuben and Rose packaged their ice cream in cartons and marketed it around New York City. They even added a map of Denmark on the cartons to give the brand more foreign cachet. But anyone who speaks a Scandinavian language knows that Häagen-Dazs isn’t native to that geographic region. The words aren’t native to any region, really. They’re a dubious trick used to sell the ice cream. Only the savvy (or those who spoke Danish) noticed the deceit right away—the Danish language doesn’t use umlauts, those two dots above the letter “a.”

From its small origins, the ice cream grew into a phenomenon. With no money for advertising, Rose personally visited bodegas and delis around New York to get owners to carry it. It took a few years, but Häagen-Dazs became a hit, first in New York City, and then beyond. By the early 1970s, people all over America were enjoying it, and rumors about the ice cream’s origin had already developed: some people believed that Frank Sinatra had discovered the ice cream overseas and introduced it to the United States. Häagen-Dazs was sold to Pillsbury in 1983 for $70 million; that company in turn sold it to General Mills.

All three original Häagen-Dazs flavors have the same calorie count: 270 calories per half cup. Decadent flavors like Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Sticky Toffee Pudding, and Triple Chocolate up the ante calorie-wise, but not as much as Chocolate Peanut Butter—that’s the highest, with 360 calories in each half cup.

After selling the company, Reuben and Rose Mattus stayed on as consultants to Pillsbury. Häagen-Dazs was the first to market premium ice cream bars in 1986. And Reuben and Rose continued to be pacesetters in the industry. In 1992, they introduced a low-fat brand that contains only 3 percent fat. (Häagen-Dazs has about six times more than that.) They named their new venture the Mattus Ice Cream Company.