The lovely ladies in the photo at the top of this entry are the Siamese twins mentioned in the title. The photo was taken from a scan from an Avon brochure from 1974. I originally saw this photo back then, while looking through one of my mom's Avon brochures. I would like to state that I taught myself to read at the age of 2, and often would read whatever I could get my hands on, which did occasionally iinclude my mom's Avon brochures. This photo was the first image I had ever seen of conjoined twins, and it intrigued me. I had never seen two people before who were physically joined to one another before. I don't know how they made these women appear to be joined at the back, although back in 1974, as far as I was concerned, they were born joined back to back.
As for the skincare, the product this photo was used to advertise was Perfect Balance, a skincare line Avon produced from 1974 to at least 1978, according to my research. I had never thought about why Avon would use conjoined twins, particularly twins conjoined back to back, for this particular product, or any product, for that matter. I had been told the twins represent balance, which does make sense. Another theory I had about that also involves the headscarf they're wearing. I had thought of several reasons they're wearing it. The reason that ties into the fact they use rachipagus (the medical term for a back to back conjoinment) conjoined twins to represent balance, is they wear the scarf to resemble the logo on product packaging(which is pictured below:)
I noticed when I first rediscovered the photo of the twins back in 2013 that the product logo used on packaging resembles a feminine version of Janus, the two-faced god of Roman mythology. The use of two connected faces looking in opposite directions also represents balance. However, that is not the only reason I have theorized the women wear a headscarf (I had, for some reason, imagined each woman wearing a separate headscarf, although they were still knotted together at the base of the neck, just above where their bodies were joined). One theory I had was the scarf was used to hide the fact the women were in fact not identical twins, as conjoined twins are always identical (although the women could possibily been sisters, or even fraternal twins), and/or they have different colored hair(while the fact they have different colored hair can be explained by the fact one or both twins could have dyed her hair, as real life conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton had at the time they filmed Chained for Life, to represent balance, especially perfect balance, they would have to appear identical, including having the same hair color. A third theory concerning the headscarf is, the women are supposed to be joined not only back to back, but at the backs of their heads, and the scarf is supposed to represent the cranial conjoinment. As for the theory the women were not in fact identical twins, the following picture, scanned from another Avon brochure from 1974, shows who I believe could have been the women in the photo:
Of course, I may be wrong, but it is possible these ladies could very well be the conjoined twins from the original photo.
When I first saw the picture, I was curious, having never seen two people who were joined to one another. I did what moist 4 year olds would do when they saw something that piqued their curiosity: I showed the picture to my mom(her name is Sharon, she's the Sharon mentioned iin the title) who told me the women were Siamese twins. I also remember her telling me how they would solve one particular problem, that being when one Siamese twin wants to eat dinner, while the other wants to go to bed: the hungry twin eats dinner in bed.
Anywho, now to the part that links everything in the title together: for a time after first seeing that photo, I had a recurring dream. In this dream, my mom and Shirley Jones, as Shirley Partridge were Siamese twins, joined back to back, like the twins in the photo. However, they were not born joined, but glued themselves together by slathering generous amounts of Perfect Balance on their backs. As I recall, I believe they used at least 1 or 2 jars of Perfect Balance each. I distinctly remember at least once, the whole Partridge Family was there(just Keith, Laurie, Danny, Chris and Tracy, although I don't remember if Reuben Kincaid ever appeared). I have thought about this dream, tried to figure out what it means, and the only thing I have come up with is that the dream was nothing more than a mash-up of random images(the Siamese twinsand Perfect Balance come from seeing them in an Avon brochure, my mom was the one person iin my life I had spent the most time with at that point iin my life, and Shirley Partridge came from the fact we did watch the Partridge Family).
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