Saturday 24 October 2009

Coot Avoidance Therapy


OK. It’s time to admit it. I have too much hair.

If my hair were a bank balance, it would be overdrawn by a trillion quid. If my hair were a concept album, it would be Sandinista! – the sprawling three-disc set by the Clash. If my hair were a brass instrument, it would be a tuba with mega-bad reeds. If my hair were a yeti, it would be a really hairy yeti. If my hair… OK, you get the point.

I know long hair on males is universally acknowledged as a fashion faux pas. But being fashionable has never been the highest on my list of concerns – it nestles somewhere beneath appreciating graphic novels, attending the opera, and getting a job in telesales.

I like long hair because it keeps my head warm. As someone prone to getting the flu every few minutes, this is a boon in the winter. Also, long hair gives me somewhere to hide when I have to interact with those obnoxious cretins with sweaty thighs known as other people. I also find having long hair diminishes the pouting Scot persona I have when I go short-haired.

Other reasons? Hmm. I like pretending it’s 1970 and dancing to the disco beats of Ottawan (remember D-I-S-C-O – their infectious pop classic reminding us how to properly spell the word disco?) I like the four chaffinches I have nestling in there. I like how it absorbs the rain. I like how pieces of chewing gum or old sausages end up there. It’s a handy snack-stash.

The real reason, of course, is that I HATE the hairdresser-stroke-barber. I loathe sitting in the chair and having the boiling water poured over my weak scalp. I attribute this to childhood, spending hours in the hairdressing salon where my mother worked and dreading my turn. Plus, part of me is still rebelling from sixteen years of getting the SAME haircut every three months. Thanks, Maw.

More importantly, if I go bald in my thirties like my father and brother, I can simply staple the lost hair back on my scalp until I’m a respectable age for baldness. Like sixty or something.

So for the time being I will continue to walk the streets like a crazily coiffed prat, passing off my dreads as an eccentric quirk of my outstanding personality. Or as another attempt to gradually detach myself from any kind of mainstream cultural acceptance.

Viva hairy freakdom!

5 comments:

  1. Do NOT have your hair cut. I had mine cut in 1996 and have regretted it ever since. Man, I was gorgeous. My friends called my Farrah (that's Farrah Faucett for the younger crowd. No? OK, that's one of the original Charlie's Angels. No, not Lucy Liu.)

    Honesly, I looked more like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman once she took off the suicide blonde wig.

    Long story short, keep it long.

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  2. You as Julia Roberts. Now there's an image.

    Fear ye not, as my locks are staying put until further notice.

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  3. Ha! I have too much hair, too. It's halfway down my back and I've been meaning to get a trim for a week and bring it up an inch. It's a nuisance when it's this long.

    We can always ponytail it out of the way, I guess.

    Elizabeth Mystery Writing is Murder

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  4. I have a confession... I prefer long hair--on men and women. My shaven-scalped husband would prefer everybody bald, so i suppose he and I are even on that front--neither of us caring for the other's choice.

    I just think hair hides some head flaws aesthetically, but more importantly, it also is a more care-free look... rebellious. Somebody with long hair is not giving in to corporate or societal demands, which makes it more likely they are my kind of people...

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  5. Elizabeth: Just found your blog. Great resource. But ponytail on men... yeugh. Unless you're Patrick Swayze. God rest his lovely soul.

    Tart/Hart: You know how to keep me happy. I'm very willing to rebel against authority until they shout at me. Then I cower.

    But they'll never take my hair! Never!

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