Hair she blows!
Graphic by Nic Vandergugten.
There’s a scene in the cult British film, Withnail and I, where tweaked-out hippie Danny, high as a kite, remarks, “Hair are your aerials—they pick up signals from the cosmos and transmit them directly into the brain—this is the reason bald-headed men are uptight.” It’s a good joke, but with a sad resonance.
Despite what we think, we’re a rather haughty and narcissistic lot. How many accumulative hours do we spend fussing in front of the mirror with our hairstyles? We bleach it, colour it, pluck it, shave it, tease it, trip it, tweeze it, wax it, or we let it grow.
How often do we consider the lengths we go to over our upswept frizzies? Our beauty-obsessed culture certainly makes it tough on our tufts and this need we have to make up is a curious part of our make-up.
It isn’t just for vanity that we contemplate our cuts—the roots of our hairy hindrance run deeper than our scalp. Pride aside, there are religious and cultural considerations, such as class and occupational status, that insure our coiffures.
It wasn’t so long ago that having long hair was considered an act of defiance. Like the offbeat Bohemians in the musical Hair, we romanticize our locks: “Long, beautiful, shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen… I adore hair!” We long to possess such tresses.
But it’s a classic human folly to wish to possess something we barely understand. Our hair is our greatest indicator—at a cursory glance—our first signifier as to whom and what we are.
We’ve all heard the jokes about pornos from the ’70s and the unshaven actors therein, and body hair jokes are still making the rounds, too. (“Yo’ mama so hairy, her armpit looks like she’s got Don King in a headlock!”)
Hair colour, style, and texture can denote our ethnic ancestry, our age, and, some might argue, even our virility.
At puberty, facial hair starts to grow, and this has a lot of ramifications, particularly amongst Muslims, Orthodox Jews, and Sikhs, for instance.
Religious observance is one example of our fringe fixation, but so too our political posturing and our place in the populace. Crew cuts scream of military influence or monk-like tonsure, while a shaved head might also mean severe punishment, as in prison camps or reformatories.
In a sense, we place ourselves in the clink when we view our own bodies.
The hair-removal industry is exploding as both sexes frequent salons and spas to have hair removed.
From Brazilian waxes and eyebrow shaping to complete body-hair extraction, we do it all with willingness and zeal.
But why go to such lengths and why is such a social stigma attached to it?
The late, renowned Mexican painter Frida Kahlo caused a stir by simply letting her monobrow grow unchallenged. Her self-portraits featured not only her confluence of eyebrows but also her moustache, yet her charm and glamour endured.
But the laughs these gags elicit can come in self-defence. We’re all in this together and we might as well treasure our treasure trails while we’re here.
After all, how can we control our lives if we can’t even control our hair?
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