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The Clairol Girl, 1971

cybill shepherd young

It was during my sophomore year in high school in 1971 that I'd happened upon a magnificent discovery. Like most of my kind, I struggled to fit into the world entering the new decade as a somewhat gawky teenager. The more I tried to find myself the more lost I became. Tremendous influences were everywhere; Media exploded with wild bursts of color and music was more sophisticated. The world was changing fast and I still hadn't hit my high note.

Art was my primary form of expression, and I spent hundreds of man hours sketching out portraits of people who either greatly impressed me, or rocked my world. Certain classmates knew I was a good artist, but I mostly kept the ability to myself. Then one day I enjoyed minor celebrity status owing to one unforgettable female. This enchantress was known to me as “The Clairol Girl”.

Girls, whom I’d blissfully ignored as a kid, blossomed. All of a sudden, they were everywhere, and registered on my radar at every waking moment. They also terrified me; I felt bullet wounds in each knee whenever I was in their presence. Girls were my steadfast fascination though I was too shy to ask any of them out. Enter The Clairol Girl.

It was in a fashion magazine ad that my eyes were introduced to an exquisite creature with thin lips, golden tresses, and devil eyes. Her "fresh everyday" look was a delicious mix of honey-blonde hair and flawless skin. I could not look away from the photo. She literally radiated from the magazine page. Her loveliness was overwhelming, and she presented as a spritely beauty that showed me there was more to life than sophomore girls. Ms. Clairol was the first girl that truly broke down my defenses.

I found myself at a loss for words; I stared at her and she stared back; Not once did her smile falter, not once did her eyes twitch. Who on earth could this be? I went into full cardiac arrest where I collapsed and died. Magazine ads sometimes found room in their finest print to provide the name of the model, but in this case, there was none. There was only this gleaming face smiling at me.

I put out good money on the magazine in order to be further dazzled by that alluring face. Mind you, this was money that should have gone toward one of my favorite albums, or spent with friends. If a magazine was the thing to buy, it sure wouldn’t have been a woman’s fashion chronicle. I felt embarrassed purchasing it, and found myself checking over my shoulder for any familiar people who might see me buying it. Still, there was no stopping me; when Ms. Clairol smiled at me from the semi-gloss pulp I found myself going straight for my wallet.

Once I got home, I knew I had my mission: immortalize this epic beauty and put to paper that face using all the talent I could muster. This wasn’t to be my usual portrait of one of The Beatles, or any other top rock star that I spent my conscious hours worshiping. This was to be a portrait of dire importance. Each feature, line, shape, tone and nuance needed to be, in a word, perfection. Essentially, the portrait needed to be done beyond my skill level. Then providence prevailed!

As a high school art class assignment, we were given what I deemed to be an enormously fitting project: a portrait. It didn’t matter who it was, just as long as it was completed by the end of the week. Our assignment was to observe light and shadow, use a suitable medium and employ a worthy technique. In other words, it couldn't be scribbled out at the last minute. While some students groaned at the prospect of such an undertaking, I relished the task wishing I had nothing else in the world to do except begin that assignment. The timing for such a project couldn't have been better.

I had the perfect subject! Explaining that it was a school project permitted me to talk mom and dad into purchasing art supplies outside the boundaries of my allowance. I worked larger than normal on paper measuring eighteen by twenty-four inches. I also picked up the finest pencils money could buy. I spared no expense for Lady Clairol.

It was at this point of preparation that I happened upon a very happy accident. I was eating my lunch at school while doodling. I'd discovered quite by chance that an empty wax sandwich bag was fun to doodle on. Once the wax gave way to the pencil, it created troughs of thick lines. The real discovery was when I got bored with that, and shaded over the piece of paper the wax baggie was sitting on. Lines of my pencil doodling appeared on the paper!

The baggie left a wax residue on the paper invisible to the eye, but visible underneath the pencil shading. As my mind was processing the event, I realized I could draw Lady Clairol’s hair in a most realistic fashion by literally engraving the strands into the paper by drawing them over wax paper.

This was a wow moment. I experimented further and further, and the results were fantastic. I found that by using a harder lead pencil and a large sheet of wax paper, I could engrave the drawing paper underneath. Lady Clairol's angelic hair would pop right from the paper with this technique. This was such an incredible discovery that I began to look at art in a different way; I saw that experimentation yields either dynamic failures, or astronomic successes. Mine was the latter.

Armed with this new knowledge, and an even stronger desire to do my very best on the portrait, I began the first step: the shape of the face. As the work slowly progressed, I was very happy with the final product. In fact, I’d basically out-done myself. My newly acquired skill of rendering fine lines of hair worked like a charm. Honey blonde strands drifted across her face in a most skillful fashion. My inspiration sprang from the paper like spring daffodils. Having taken most of the week to get it right, my masterpiece was finally finished. I had captured The Clairol Girl.

When Monday morning came, I wandered into class like everyone else, carrying something protected under my arm. Little did anyone know I had immortalized an angel on a sketch pad. Lady Clairol was complete and ready for unveiling. I was a bit shaky at the excitement. My teacher held it up, and there were some oohs and aahs. He nodded toward me with a smile. “Very nice work. Great detail and shading. Who is it?”

“It's Cybill Shepherd,” one of the girls in class said.

cybill shepherd 1971

What? Just like that, the mystery was solved? After all this soul-searching-pencil-bending-starry-eyed-gazes-at-the-photo, The Clairol Girl had a name? Better yet, it was a grand name. It was as if an angelic choir sang to me while heavenly beams of sun rays illuminated my desk. The Clairol Girl was called Cybill Shepherd. Cybill; it was too perfect. This was an uncommon name in my small sphere of girl-dom. She wasn’t a Debbie, or a Cindy, or even a Michelle. Cybill was the perfect brand for this delightful creature who, in a glance, hot-wired my hormones and re-shaped my entire artistic career.

My drawing not only received an A+, but found its way to the spring art exhibit. This I hadn't expected. There were several very talented art students in school who had it over me by leaps and bounds. Cybill's exodus took her from the pages of a fashion magazine to a large sketchpad, and ultimately to the walls of our school art show. My happy accidents were two-fold: the engraving technique and finding Cybill as the model that carried my work to the show.

I achieved a small degree of fame. Opportunity soon came knocking. The more popular girls in school decided to acknowledge me in a vain attempt at getting a free portrait. They did not, but it felt good just the same. As pretty as they were, they had nothing on Cybill. Cybill remained my primary love for a heart-wrenching two weeks. She was replaced by a girl in my math class, who, unlike Cybill, was not imprisoned in print.

I survived 1971. I fell in and out of love with Cybill Shepherd, and hit my high note. I enjoyed many new experiences and developed as an artist. Becoming quite serious, I was actually earning money with my drawings and paintings by 1972. My accidental, yet monumental discovery of the wax paper technique has remained with me to this day, where I continue to experiment with engraving techniques.