Conversation | 03/18/2009 11:00 pm

Lesley Stahl: My Hair Is Sprayed With Cement!

With Jane Wagner, Lesley Stahl, Mary Wells and Sheila Nevins

We asked Lesley Stahl, Mary Wells, Jane Wagner and Sheila Nevins about their hair, its care and feeding.

LESLEY: When I get up and do my hair, I spray it so completely — with cement — that if you called me at five o’clock it would still be cement. I’d be able to run out.

MARY: It doesn’t look that way.

JANE: No, Lesley, your hair looks gorgeous all the time. It looks layered and so thick.

LESLEY: This business of just getting it in place and not having a hair move started when I was covering the White House for CBS. I could be called on to be on camera at any second. No time to play around, not even, really, time to put lipstick on. So you had to be ready at any point during the day. Cement was the solution I came to and it worked. And so I just keep doing that.

SHEILA: You don’t have to have it done by anyone? You can do it all by yourself?

LESLEY: Well, you have to learn to do that.

SHEILA: I can’t. I can’t. I can’t learn to do my own hair.

JANE: I sometimes use a root-lifter spray, but what good is it if your roots stay up but the rest of your hair falls down limp? Why shouldn’t you use the root lifter all the way up?

SHEILA: Well, it depends how I want to look. If I want to just go to work and schlump around I can do it. But if I want to look good, I have to be primped up by someone else. I can’t primp up. I can’t use a blow-dryer. I can’t do any of those things properly. I don’t know how people do it. You actually blow-dry your own hair?

LESLEY: Yes.

SHEILA: I am just hateful. I mean, it always looks good because I work on it outside the house. But inside its very hard to — I’ve tried. People always ask me what’s wrong with my hair when I do it by myself.

JANE: The secret is a good haircut, but I’ve never had one in my life. In fact, my bad hair days are usually when I’ve been to the beauty salon and had my hair cut.

SHEILA: No, no, but it also depends on whether you have straight or curly hair. You see, I have curly hair. But I have the affect of straight hair. So I’ve been fighting whatever it is I was born with my whole life, you know, by either putting rollers on when I was a kid and sitting with that big blossomy hair-dryer, or finding the cheapest place to blow-dry my hair. Hair is a major issue in my life because I can’t just jump up and go, because I don’t know how to do it.

41 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

OMG this conversation cracks me UP! it is soooo universally FEMALE. to darn funny! I remember some comedy skit (might have been snl might not have been) where there were two women in the skit. the only thing I really remember is one woman says to the other one within seconds after meeting her "I know you want my hair and I want your hair". i laughed my ass off and my boyfriend at the time was totally clueless. didn’t get the joke at all. What IS it with women and hair?

so now i get to talk about my hair lol. I have a love hate relationship with it. it’s super healthy, a nice texture, very thick… but i don’t know how to "fix" it at all. I don’t like it short cuz i can never fix it. so i wear it long… which means it’s always in some kind of an updo. either in a bun type thing or in a pony tail or in a hat or head band of some sort. Plus i’m always in a convertible, on a motorcycle or working out. so why bother? i might as well shave it lol.

By Chrome Toe on 03/19/2009 12:37 am

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If you shave it Chrome, you get new problems LOL. Mine got shaved twice for brain surgeries and what was always straight hair is now curly!! Have always had thick hair but now it does not get past a certain length and I get it cut because it just seems to get wider not longer.

By Sandbee (FB) 54 on 03/19/2009 5:06 am

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Hey Sandbee!

That must be a normal thing, because a friend of mine had breast cancer a few years ago and had to have chemo. Well, of course, all of her hair fell out. Before the chemo her hair was turning gray and it was straight. After chemo, her hair grew out dark (with no gray) and is very wavy!

By Serena . on 03/19/2009 7:24 am

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My hair is so thick, my concentration is on figuring out which way I can try to tame it for the day. Doesn’t matter if it is long or short, the taming is always needed.

By Linda Myers on 03/19/2009 12:49 am

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I remember trying to sleep in rollers! Yuck!!! I don’t miss that at all!

Linda, I too have thick hair, but as I’ve gotten older it has become much more managable - not perfect, but managable.

By Chris Broersma on 03/19/2009 1:11 am

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Hahaha, Chris. In high school I coudln’t bear the rollers so I went to socks. Just take a bunch of hair and a cotton sock and use it as a roller. Then tie the ends in a knot. That didn’t go far either because the socks were just as lumpy as the rollers.

I can remember getting the first Tony Home Permanent. Out in the back yard because it smelled SO bad we couldn’t breathe, my mother rolled it up and poured this terrible stuff on me. What a stink… like pure lye. I had to sit there and not move for about half an hour. Oh the pain. I did come out curly, but at what a cost!!

By Patrice Baldwin on 03/19/2009 6:23 pm

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I’m lucky, I’m a retired cosmetologist so I know how to do my own hair. I even cut it myself….Sometimes I go to my hairdresser and have a good shape up.

By the way, I find sometimes I need a little extra curl……..hot irons don’t work on my hair……..it falls right out.

I make soft finger rolls (before I go to bed) where you use bobby pins to hold in place…….In the morning you have nice soft curls/waves.

The new spray shines are wonderful, but apply very lightly, otherwise it makes your hair look greasy……….a NO NO.

By Dona Howlett on 03/19/2009 1:29 am

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Oh Dona! Finger rolls and bobbie pins take me back to a bedtime ritual that my mother constantly performed on me - and those pinky orange rubber curlers Saturday night for ‘church hair’ on Sunday mornings.

I have thick hair that is not curly but will ‘bend’. I have it cut every four weeks to keep it line. I never leave the salon without having my next appointment booked.

By Green Tears on 03/19/2009 5:59 am

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I have only had 2 good haircuts in my life, as I have very weird hair. It baffles my hairstylist who never can do the same thing twice, as it defys her…me too. The strangest thing is my hair was always stick straight, and in the past year has become very curly. I look in the mirror and comb this curly hair that I used to long for and now wonder how and why this has happened.

By Lizzie R. on 03/19/2009 1:36 am

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Dona, what do you you do for a weird cowlick in the front of your head? I have one that lies just left of the middle by my bangs and if my bangs get one millimeter too long it looks like someone axed my head. I have alot of hair but very fine and straight. I never had this until I got over 50. Plus I’m blonde and won’t get even one gray hair. What’s up with that? I’m tired of paying for highlights when they should be coming naturally.

By Dawn Smith on 03/19/2009 3:26 am

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Sorry Dawn,

I never had to deal with a cowlick in the front….Check with your hair dresser. Maybe they have chemicals now that could soften the hair and make it manageable.

By Dona Howlett on 03/19/2009 7:07 pm

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Thanks Dona for responding. My hairdresser suggested I blow-dry it in one direction and then the other but that doesn’t always work when your hair has a mind of it’s own. My hair is baby soft and that may be the problem.

By Dawn Smith on 03/20/2009 7:28 am

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Thank you for the morning laughs, ladies. This is the old wOw I remember!! Keep it up!

And Ms. Jane, you’re right. Looks aren’t that important, but you look great anyway. :) All of you do!

Thanks for getting my morning started.

By Serena . on 03/19/2009 5:17 am

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LESLEY…HMO ALERT…..HAIR MAKE-OVER ALERT…..MY HAIR STYLIST, MONICA, EUROPEAN SALON, BOCA RATON, FL WORKS WONDERS…. I TEACH GOLF, SECRET WISH TO CUT HAIR….WALTERA MITTY ON MY PART… MY INTENTIONS ARE HONORABLE….TO RETURN YOUR MARVELOUS GOOD LOOK…..STOP GOING TO QUASIMOTO, PLEASE!!! SANDRA E., DELRAY BEACH, FL