`Circus' Mom Gets New Do

After 36 years with a bob and pointy flip, Mommy is getting a new hairdo - thanks to a reader's suggestion that the character in the popular comic strip "Family Circus" was looking a bit passe.

The author of the strip, Bil Keane of Paradise Valley, Ariz., said a man wrote him that it was old-fashioned for Mommy to still have the same hairstyle she wore in 1960, when he started the feature. The cartoonist said he based the hairdo on the way his wife wore her hair back then.

The writer, Tim Vanderburg of Lubbock, Texas, said Keane was going to run it by his wife. (Then) he wrote back and said, basically, `She deserves a change.' "

Monday's strip had Mommy going to the hairdresser. Today, readers can see the new hairdo.