<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  Naomi Watts is not talking. She&amp;#039;s flicking her eyes to and away from a movie camera, doing that thing with her hair\u2014tousling it, cupping it in her palms, fluffing it around her face\u2014as if whoever lies on the other side of the lens is the single most attractive person she&amp;#039;s ever seen. The action seems autoerotic, so strangely intimate that, in the darkened studio, surrounded by a hushed audience of production assistants and advertising executives, I find myself blushing. Should we give the woman some privacy? You&amp;#039;d never know that Watts is working with a head of hair that has, in the past, been dyed pink, home-permed, and, once, chopped into an asymmetric, partially shaved situation inspired by the &amp;#039;80s \u00ADEnglish chart toppers Human League. (&amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t have the $15 to go get the haircut, so I tried to do it myself,&amp;quot; Watts says of this classic age-14 misadventure. &amp;quot;I looked like a teenager on the verge of a nervous breakdown.&amp;quot;) Her hair is naturally fine and &amp;quot;not straight, not curly,&amp;quot; she says; on days off, it is gen\u00ADerally left to its own devices in a ponytail. Today, though, Watts is not, as the tabloids say, &amp;quot;just like us!&amp;quot;\u2014and neither is her hair. She&amp;#039;s Marilyn Monroe, staring at herself in the mirror as she dabs her cleavage with Chanel No. 5, a goddess with a flaxen, bouncy mane that will, if all goes according to plan, inspire legions of women to buy Pantene&amp;#039;s new range of Flat to Volume thick-ifying styling products. (Eva Mendes, the face of a new line of damage-undoing shampoos and conditioners called Breakage to Strength, is the company&amp;#039;s other new drool-inducing beauty.) As for the tr\u00E8s intime moment I&amp;#039;ve just witnessed, it will, by the time you read this, be beamed into every living room in America. &amp;quot;Honestly, if you stop to think about it, you just fall to pieces in a giggling fit,&amp;quot; Watts says. &amp;quot;You feel like a complete goofbag touching your hair so much.&amp;quot; To capture the three seconds known in the industry as the &amp;quot;wow moment&amp;quot;\u2014the follicular money shot\u2014the director &amp;quot;was rolling and the music was going, and I just felt like, Oh my God, I&amp;#039;m doing soft-core porn!&amp;quot; As escapist fixes go, the TV hair commercial is a pure and potent\u2014and unu\u00ADsu\u00ADally nostalgic\u2014cocktail. How many, say, cleaning product ads do you remember? But spy a woman running her fingers through her hair or, better yet, performing that classic slo-mo head fliiiiiiip, and you will flash back to any number of Watts&amp;#039; and Mendes&amp;#039; predecessors: Cybill Shepherd winking that she&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;worth it&amp;quot;; Kelly LeBrock, towel-drying her perm as she taunts, &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t hate me \u00ADbecause I&amp;#039;m beautiful.&amp;quot; I, for one, always reel back to an early-&amp;#039;90s spot for Salon Selectives: career gals in shoulder pads, trotting out of office buildings, legging it down sunny sidewalks, and hailing Checker cabs, their mirror\u00ADlike curls swishing tick-tock-tick against the metronome of their hips\u2014a symbol, it seemed to my own 14-year-old self (what is it about that age?), of their buoyant independence.          Their message, easy to imbibe, was that the mop on my top\u2014at the time, painstakingly feathered in front, &amp;quot;scrunched&amp;quot; in back\u2014was somehow linked to my future happiness. It sounds like a vain adolescent fantasy, perhaps, but in fact it has proven to be somewhat true: These days, during the brief window of time immediately following my bian\u00ADnual salon trim and highlights, when my hair looks truly (expensively) spectacular, I do feel great\u2014empowered, self-\u00ADassured, amazingly female. And there are certain situations in which I genuinely need that confidence boost; I&amp;#039;d never walk into a job interview, for example, without the benefit of a good blow-out. When your hair looks and feels great, so do you; when it doesn&amp;#039;t, well... There&amp;#039;s no better proof of just how indelible hair idols can be than the long-term \u00ADappeal of the parade of all-American Breck girls, who set a certain innocent, rosy-cheeked standard of womanhood throughout the mid-twentieth century. Chemist John Breck concocted one of the first liquid shampoos, in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1908, but his product did not become a household name until 1936, when his company hired Charles Sheldon, a Springfield-based illustrator said to have studied under Czech art-nouveau master Alphonse Mucha. The subjects of the 107 pastel portraits Sheldon did for Breck were &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; women\u2014mothers, daughters, sisters, and secretaries culled from the community, their hair done up in gleaming &amp;#039;40s &amp;quot;victory rolls&amp;quot; and demure low buns. In 1948, Sheldon called up the local high school in search of a multitasking young beauty who could both type and pose for the occasional picture. They sent him Marilyn Patch, a natural blond who styled her hair herself (using Breck, naturally; &amp;quot;We got it for free,&amp;quot; she says) for the portraits that would run in Ladies&amp;#039; Home Journal and Woman&amp;#039;s Home Companion. Now 82 and still turning heads in Deer Isle, Maine, Patch recalls the Breck ideal as an &amp;quot;all-American girl who had a wholesome glamour&amp;quot;\u2014a look that left a lasting impression on the nation&amp;#039;s populace. &amp;quot;When I moved up here to the island, somebody would introduce me and say, `She&amp;#039;s been a Breck girl,&amp;#039; and they&amp;#039;d say, `Oh, I used to love those Breck ads!&amp;#039;\u2009&amp;quot; she says, laughing. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;d go on and on. A couple of times, a man would say, `I was in love with the Breck girls.&amp;#039;\u2009&amp;quot; Sadly, radiant pastel portraits of neighborhood beauties don&amp;#039;t move much product these days. Pantene storyboards each of their commercials shot for shot with the precision\u2014and, no doubt, expense\u2014of Michael Bay action sequences, and spends two full days shooting a single 30-\u00ADsecond ad. Linda Mummiani, executive vice president, and Caitlin Ewing, creative director, of ad agency Grey NYC, have worked on Pantene commercials together for a decade. Their job, they say, is to tap into finely observed, universal moments, like when a woman lets down her hair in front of a man\u2014&amp;quot;We all know what we&amp;#039;re up to with that move,&amp;quot; says Ewing\u2014or a girl absently twirls the ends of her hair in line at the supermarket. The secret, though, of heightening such ordinary moments into the extraordinary\u2014the how&amp;#039;d-they-do-that factor\u2014can be summed up in two words: slow motion. &amp;quot;Even a beer can splashed with water, moving in slow motion, can become magical,&amp;quot; Mummiani says, miming a camera zooming in on the vase of roses on the coffee table in front of her. If the rose becomes more than a rose under such minute inspection, the age-old hair toss becomes a symphony in eight parts. As recently as the &amp;#039;90s, filmmakers were limited to real-time cameras that shot 24 frames per second. In 2004, the Pantene team switched to &amp;quot;a game changer,&amp;quot; says Mummiani\u2014a photosonic camera, until then used only in still-life photography, which shot 300 frames per second. But photosonic cameras were cost-prohibitive, requiring tons of light and eating up reams of film. In 2009, they started using high-def digital: 800 frames per second, no film. Suddenly, the movement of every wafting strand is captured in exquisite detail. Of course, this means good hair matters more than ever. Filming my own workaday mop in &amp;quot;exquisite detail&amp;quot; would yield a hairstyling PSA, not a commercial. So, with Watts still in front of the camera, I seize my moment. I scurry backstage and hurl my skull into the shampoo basin of Serena Radaelli, who has styled the hair of almost every Pantene model for the last 10 years. &amp;quot;Do it! Give me TV hair,&amp;quot; I squeal. Left with little choice, she washes and conditions my hair with the Breakage to Strength duo, then combs it out with the careful precision with which a gardener might tend a bonsai. Starting at the nape of my neck, she masterfully coils each section of hair around a medium-width round brush, pulling it taut at an angle directly north of the scalp that I could never execute on myself. She gives the base of each section a shot of root-boosting spray, then blasts the length of it with a Ferrari-red Supersolano (the pros&amp;#039; blow-dryer of choice). Each piece releases into a springy S-curve, airy enough to do a little don&amp;#039;t-you-want-me shimmy with every movement of my head. As far as I can tell, though, this is just a blow-out\u2014albeit the best available to mankind. What about the elaborate techniques, the crazy styling tools, the secret sauce that one assumes must go into such follicular masterpieces? Radaelli says if I were a &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; hair model, she&amp;#039;d probably wrap each section on a large Velcro roller to set as it cools, to give the curl more staying power for a full day of shooting. As for the mysterious absence of product\u2014that, she whispers, is the real holy\u00AD-grail secret of TV hair. It&amp;#039;s...clean. The stuff has got to move. Hairspray, essentially designed to make strands stay in place, would hinder the all-important toss; silicone shine products would weigh it down. &amp;quot;And we never, ever use extensions,&amp;quot; Radaelli says sternly, catching me examining her kit for evidence. By the time she&amp;#039;s done, I&amp;#039;m a believer. My hair is Cindy Crawford at the height of her powers; it&amp;#039;s Vanessa Redgrave, staring into Avedon&amp;#039;s lens, naked, with the wind machine on high. Strands preternaturally afloat, I step out of the studio into my own real-time hair commercial, and recall Marilyn Patch. &amp;quot;Hair,&amp;quot; she told me, &amp;quot;makes all the difference.&amp;quot; She would know.            The Body Builders For long-lasting volume, wrap hair that is still hot from the dryer or curling iron around Conair Mega Self Holding Rollers to set; for loose, touchable waves, hairstylist Serena Radaelli uses a 1.25&amp;quot; curling iron like this t3 Twirl; Watts&amp;#039; new best friend, Pantene Pro-V Fine Hair Spray Gel Root Lifter; Mendes prepped for her own TV moment by using Pantene Pro-V Medium-Thick Hair Solutions Breakage to Strength Conditioner like a mask, which she advises sleeping in overnight, &amp;quot;but not when you&amp;#039;ve got company!&amp;quot; Mendes says, laughing. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/beauty/hair/tips/a11717/hair-makeover/?src=global_footer>