Celebrity Hairstyles: Ellen DeGeneres

Introduction

Ellen DeGeneres at 2004 Emmy Awards

ABC/Touchstone All Rights Reserved

Ironically my Ellen Addiction didn't start when I first wrote a short piece about her hairdresser who coifs the comic wonder's tresses with Paul Mitchell products.

Nor did it develop when my dear friend, celebrity hairdresser Robert Hallowell confided that he was dying to share his special cat shampoos with the famous Ms. D.

Nope, the blame for my current all-consuming addiction to she-who-dances, also known simply as Ellen, can be blamed solely on my dear lifetime friend, Carolyn Cooper.

It All Started With Carolyn Cooper

Don't get me wrong, I was a modest fan of Ellen's original TV series. I was also one of the gazillion people watching when Ellen made television sitcom history. But it wasn't until Carolyn and I were having lunch at Mac's Bar & Grill in Plano, Texas, that I caught the terminal Ellen bug.

Throughout our entire girlfriends-who-lunch experience Carolyn would pepper other topics with Ellenisms. It all started when the waiter brought some dreaded white bread - to our table. As I sneered, Carolyn ripped off a huge piece and calmly said "you know, Ellen believes that people need to eat more bread". I was a little taken aback since we were busy debating traffic patterns when Ellen somehow popped into our conversation.

After Carolyn explained her own addiction to Ellen, followed by mock shock that I didn't Tivo Ellen's daytime talk show, the spirit of Ms. DeGeneres claimed the rest of our lunch date. In a highly animated tone, Carolyn relayed how absolutely adorable a blushing Ellen appeared during Justin Timberlake's appearance.

She also confided that Ellen's mom rarely missed a show and always sat in the same spot. She went on to rhapsodize about how Ellen had to have the most hilarious talk show in the Universe. Carolyn finished our visit by stressing the fact that she never ever missed a show unless her Tivo malfunctioned, which it tragically did a few times.

Ellen's Hair

When I got back to the safely of my office, I remembered that in the past I had written a brief article about Ellen's hairdresser.

After making a call to celeb hairdresser Robert Hallowell to ask what he knew about Ellen's strands, he informed me that "he was a gigantic fan" of the blue-eyed funny lady. We discussed her hair type and Robert reported that he had not had the great fortune to coif her golden streaked strands.

However, Robert did say that he would love to appear on Ellen's show to talk about his Kitchen Beautician hair care product line that included his secret new recipe for grooming cats. Huh? Cats? Robert explained that he also had some sort of newfangled concoction to deal with raccoons. Whoa. I decided that was just too much information since I did not understand, at the moment, Ellen's cat/raccoon issues.

Obviously the topic of Ellen's tresses had not left a huge impression on my psyche. Neither had the previous Paul Mitchell scoop or Robert's glowing praises of Ellen's choppy layers.

With all the babble about Ellen, I rationalized, maybe I should check out the show to do an update on Ellen's hairstyle. After all, hair is really my first passion and maybe I was missing something that was scoop worthy about her tresses.

The minute that my Tivo showed Ellen dancing, I became part of the Ellen Tivo Addiction Crowd. I couldn't stop giggling nor could I prevent myself from watching every second of that very first episode that I happened upon.

Even worse, I was thrilled when the blonde streaked humor queen ran her fingers through her choppy do, made a typical Ellen face and explained that it took hours (and lots of painful hair extensions) to achieve her all natural carefree shaggy style. I reasoned that it must have been kismet for her to include mention of her hair in her monologue during my virgin viewing.

Geez, before I even knew what hit me, I had taped and watched all the reruns so that I had caught up with the entire first season. I had also called Robert on more than one occasion and badgered him about that fact that some of his celebrity hair clients (Sarah Rue, Jon Crier) had appeared on the show but he hadn't.

It wasn't so much a nahnahnah but more a case of wanting Robert to get on the show to tell me all about Ellen and her hair.

Ellen's Bread Eating Lunch Bunch

The next time I met my friend Carolyn for lunch I told her I hated her for giving me the Ellen curse. Then I confessed that I also loved her for hooking me up with such a fun and fabulous viewing experience.

Instead of our lunch date being randomly peppered with Ellenisms, our conversation was totally dominated by our favorite show moments. Not only did we completely analyze Ellen's backyard bobcat trauma, we discussed the unfortunate passing of her cat, the adoption of her new kitten, Cricket, and the visit of the Hummer enamored Kitty. We jointly mourned the loss of the RiffRaff room box and wondered why indeed the powers to be ended the option of the fruit plate.

After absentmindedly drawing pipes and hats on the menus, waxing poetically about Ellen's most hilarious show moments (John Travolta's plane antics, Gwenyth's Paltrow's baby carriage and Leah Ramini's cold) we were exhausted from Ellenizing.

Shockingly, the topic of Ellen's hair never made to the agenda since there was so little time to discuss Kitty, Houston and all the spiders in Ellen's house. We were jointly appalled that Ellen's friend Ryan had the nerve to speed through the best parts of the show.

After being all Ellened out, we finished our bread and gin soaked lunches (only kidding on the gin) and staggered to our respective autos. And no, sadly, they were not chauffeur driven Hummer limos.

Summary

I'm not sure what this all Ellenism means but I wouldn't start to seriously worry about me until you notice that the HairBoutique.com moniker has been changed to EllenBoutique.com, that all the models in the hairstyle galleries are wearing hats and pipes and you can't control the urge to dance as you hear Ellen's theme song when you surf on in to the HairBoutique.com err EllenBoutique.com site.

Hit it Tony! It's time to dance.

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