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Charles Schulz

Posted by Marian on February 02, 2002 at

In Reply to: Charles Schulz posted by Marian on January 19, 2002

: : : : : : : : : : The term 'bad hair day' did in fact originate in the UK in 1991 uttered from the lips of Dr Alexandra Bartys, a much inspired and creative soul at the age of 17 years. Her utterances of having a bad hair day were recorded at school having woken up late and burnt the toast and then realised she could do nothing with her hair.

: : : : : : : : : Oh, come on now. I now I heard this in the early 70s, if not before.

: : : : : : : : BAD HAIR DAY -- n. a day on which one's hair is particularly unmanageable; hence, a day on which everything seems to go wrong. Colloquial, originally US. 1994 Post (Denver): Soon you will notice how much less complaining you do, even on bad hair days. From "20th Century Words: The Story of New Words in English Over the Last 100 Years" by John Ayto (Oxford University Press, New York, 1999).

: : : : : : : I found the html version of by googling "bad hair day." It's a MS Word 2000 document listing the title of "Snoopy" cartoon strips which were created by Charles M. Schultz over most of the second half of the 20th century. The title listed for the November 23, 1962 strip is "Violet's Bad Hair Day."

: : : : : : Sorry, that's html version of www.geocities.com/ Broadway/Alley/6529/files/histitle.doc.

: : : : : Excellent. I'll follow that up and update the database if I can confirm it.

: : : : : Gary

: : : : Whoops, I think it's Charles M. Schulz, not Schultz.

: : : Right. The spelling is Schulz.

: : A new book, "Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz," has several of his earlier strips. Maybe Bad Hair Day is in that collection.

: I've contacted the soon-to-open Charles M. Schulz Museum with an email to charlesmshulzmuseum.org. They ought to be able to help.

I finally heard back from someone connected with the museum. That person forwarded me the Peanuts strip in question, but indicated that her search revealed nothing about the phrase 'bad hair day.' The strip does concern Violet having a 'bad hair day,' but I am now wondering if the list of titles of Peanuts strips that I had uncovered earlier is a list created by others, after the fact, to simply REFER to particular Peanuts strips, rather than actual titles created by Mr. Schulz. If so, that would mean that I have not, in fact, found a reference connecting the phrase to a publication made as early as the strip date itself. I'll do a little more digging and report back.

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