DECEMBER 16: Good day to be unreal

ABOVE: John Travolta and Donna Pescow in Saturday Night Fever

THE DATE OF DECEMBER 16 brought the teenage Cooper sisters, Barbara and Julie, to the small screen on “One Day at a Time,” and 19-year-old Tony Manero (played by 23-year-old John Travolta) to the big screen in Saturday Night Fever. It was a big date for a bad pope, a Boston tea partier, and a very small woman in India.

DEC. 16, 955: OCTAVIANUS OR JOHN XII, 18, becomes the first pope to change his name on taking office. Apparently, he wasn’t the nicest guy. He is mostly remembered for his immorality and cruelty.

DEC. 16, 1773: NATHANIEL WILLIS, 18, is one of the youngest patriots to participate in the Boston Tea Party protest.

DEC. 16, 1975: VALERIE BERTINELLI, 15, and MACKENZIE PHILLIPS, 16, debut on the sitcom “One Day at a Time,” which stars Bonnie Franklin as a divorced mother in Indianapolis raising two teenage daughters. The show airs until 1984.

DEC. 16, 1977: JOHN TRAVOLTA stars as 19-year-old Brooklyn disco dancer Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever, which opens in wide release this day.

DEC. 16, 2011: JYOTI AMGE, 18 (above), is confirmed as the world’s shortest living woman. An student in India, Amge measures less than two feet, one inch.

HAIR THEY ARE

I just wanna be myself and I want you to know / I am my hair

— Lady Gaga, “Hair,” 2001

THE PRECEDING LINE could have been written by King Louis XIV, who started losing his mane at seventeen and responded by donning wigs so large and outlandish that Lady Gaga might be tempted to say, “Hey, tone it down, dude.”

Teens have been obsessed with their hair for centuries, none more than the fictional Marcia Brady, who brushed her luscious locks 100 times a day. A modeling agent in The Brady Bunch Movie (1995) ignited her fury by suggesting she could make it in the fashion industry with a little work, like

“… cutting that mousy hair, capping those teeth, and losing about 30 pounds, my little sausage. How do you feel about breast implants?”

Outraged, Marcia slapped him and declared, “Cut my hair?”

Here are more teens, real and fictional, who made a statement with their hair: