bad hair day

[Anne Lambert]

What is important here is not the bad but the hair.  Women's hair
doesn't always "work out" when we comb or brush it in the morning.  Then
you have a bad hair day--3 words with stress on hair--no hyphen.  This
may lead to the whole day's being felt as bad.  That's why I have a
hairstyle that requires no  care.

Greg Pulliam wrote:

> I don't think this point has been previously made WRT _bad hair day_,
> but I missed a few of the early posts on this topic.  So if this
> sounds familiar as you read it, just hit the delete key and move on,
> and accept my apologies in advance.
>
> When I first heard this term, I immediately folk-parsed it as "bad
> hair-day," because to me the idea that a person could have a
> hair-day, like they have a work-day or a holiday or a play-day was
> hilarious.  The suggestion that "Bill is having a bad hair-day"
> indicated to me that Bill was a silly and shallow person, who looked
> at his life as a series of hair-days, some good, some bad, and that
> all other aspects of his days were somehow subordinate to the quality
> of his hair-day.
>
> Parsing this as _bad-hair day_ isn't nearly so wickedly funny, is it?
>
> Or is this just me?
>
> -
> Greg