Blondes do not have more fun. Neither do brunettes.

The happiest times come, of course, to those who are confident and content with themselves, something none of us felt Saturday as flaxen-haired females.

Blonde night was, in many ways, a bust. We were cuter as blondes than we'd anticipated. We nailed the scantily dressed part of the equation. We were a bit high, and a bit more intoxicated. But we were not comfortable in our modified skins.

The three of us spent days searching for our wigs. April and I found ours at a costume shop during a weekday lunch hour. After considerable giggling and wig swapping, April settled on a platinum blonde number designed for a man called The Mullet. Name aside, she looked cute as a button in it, eerily like Loni Anderson. Mine was the Tina Turner, a long, strawberry blonde wig with a most unnatural bump on top. I reminded the wig shop owner of Elvira's sister, she said, laughing. She did not say that was a good thing.

Joani spent hours searching for hers, finally finding one 20 minutes before the wig shop closed on the night of our mission. Hers, a silvery, black-streaked wig that mimicked her natural style uncannily, was the most natural looking of all. She will, as another friend noted, be an extremely hot senior citizen.

We met at April's house Saturday night and helped one another tuck resistant strands into wig caps, brush our fake tresses into some semblance of reality and practice hair tosses. We drank wine, took vampy pictures and ramped up for an evening of high flirtation.

All that ended when we walked into the bar. We became, instead of the participants we usually are, wallflowers. Bright, yellow, hard-to-ignore wallflowers, but wallflowers nonetheless.

This was a twist I think none of us anticipated. I did not expect to see a stranger in the mirror, a woman so foreign I felt removed from myself and uncertain how to act. With a wig on my head so long and bright it demanded attention, I shrunk inwardly, certain from a couple of sidelong glances that my disguise fooled no one. For those few hours, I lost most of the confidence it's taken me years to find.

Complicating matters, we had walked into a bar birthday party attended, for the most part, by people young enough to be our children.

And Eden (for where else could we go?) had somehow become even more sexually daring than last time we'd visited. This time, instead of short dresses with plunging necklines, boy shorts or bikini tops, the waitresses were wearing underwear. Push-up bras and underpants so lacy the tags shown through them. In the space of three weeks, it had sequed from a place that seemed cutting edge sexy to borderline strip club.

The three of us, in tight jeans, a see-through blouse and lacy camisole and short black velvet dress felt conservative. It is not a place to which we shall soon return.

April tried repeatedly to liven the atmosphere. She made a few random, intentionally obnoxious comments to passing men, encouraged me to dance on a low table and shake my strawberry blonde tresses in wild abandon. But in the end, she threw up her hands, giving up not only on me but on her own attempts to attract some sort of attention.

"I feel like it's so obvious. I think everyone knows," she said.

Joani shrugged the evening off as an interesting experience. "Your expectations were too high," she said.

I had hoped for at least one phone number, but at that point would have settled for a hello. Even eye contact. But since I kept my eyes mostly downcast, that was an unlikley occurrence at best.

I've never thought of myself as particularly confident. Like most of us, the picture the world sees is somewhat different from the image I have o f myself. But I realized that night that I have better self esteem than I realized, and feel a nice sense of satisfaction with the familiar face that daily greets me in the mirror. Challenging hair and all, I like my brunette self.

So, we agreed, do we all. It's that comfort level - some days stronger than others - that lends us a confident walk, the ability to look someone square in the eye, to offer a smile that's friendly, and sometimes a touch more.

While we failed to score phone numbers, we came away with something much better for our egos: a new-found appreciation for ourselves, just the way we were made.

The wigs have not been packed away in mothballs just yet. April wants to try it again, in a different venue, a different town entirely. The Blonde Brigade must ride again, she says, this time in a city with a slightly more mature demographic, where the men have an appreciation for blonde women in their 40s.

We're saving our pennies for tickets to Florida.