Mother, daughter jokesters plan post-COVID wig party
Mother and daughter, Marcia Gnadt and Marissa Wollman, took pre-coronavirus precautions by ordering wigs to avoid “bad hair days.” The two are planning a post-coronavirus wig party, though no firm date has been scheduled at this time. Submitted photo.
From toilet paper dodgeball to extravagant themed dinners, the coronavirus quarantine is inspiring many to combat boredom in innovative ways and deal with the lack of access to certain services we typically take for granted.
That’s how the idea for the wig party was born.
It started with the serendipitous arrival of a catalog in Marcia Gnadt’s mailbox in mid-March. Gnadt owns Family, Floors & Furniture in Brandon with her husband, Woody, and works alongside her daughter, Marissa Wollman, an interior designer.
In addition to a certain air of theatricality and a sense of humor, Gnadt and Wollman share a common need to look their best when they leave the house.
The wig catalog got Gnadt thinking: With so many salons shuttering during the quarantine, who would do her hair? So she asked her daughter if she was worried.
“I came into work, and she was as serious as a judge. ‘What are you going to about your hair?’” Wollman recalls. “She was ordering makeup and stockpiling a little, and I was like, ‘What?’”
Gnadt whipped out the wig catalog.
“I was serious,” Gnadt said with a laugh. “Because I’m from that generation. The late sixties. You had a wiglet or a wig.”
The pair already have a bit of a Facebook following with the live videos they occasionally post.
“Mom gives the advice, or will pick on me for the day,” Wollman said, laughing. “One of the other favorites I have is the day she told me I was too fat. Then there was the day she told me my face looked like a European map. It was too dry, and I needed to moisturize it.”
So the pair took their “dilemma” to their friends and family, paging through the wig catalog and throwing out possibilities.
“Right away, people were like, have Marcia match us with a wig,” Wollman said. “Then someone said, ‘Hey, if we’re all going to have wigs, you’d better host a party afterwards, and we’ll all wear them.”
The mother and daughter posted a follow-up video in early April showing off their new wigs with their characteristic humor. Instead of the long, brunette locks Wollman had agreed to ordering for herself, Gnadt ordered her daughter two grey granny wigs.
“The little stinker,” Wollmann said with a laugh. “She’s a jokester, so I kind of suspected she’d get something real cute for her and silly for me.”
“The truth is I just did it for fun,” Gnadt said, smiling. “The catalog just came, and I thought, ‘Oh, let’s have fun with this.’”
The wig party is happening, they say, though the date will depend on the coronavirus situation and, of course, making sure people have their wigs ready to wear.
“There are people who are buying wigs and getting ready for the wig party,” Wollman said. “Yeah, it’s kind of fun, because women are going, ‘Hmm, I’m going to be something different.’”
