Hair

I haven't really put much time into writing anything worth blogging about lately. Went and checked my stats on a whim and was surprised to find that I was still getting 15-20 page views a day. Fascinated, I opened up the "visitor activity" log to see what these folks were reading. What jumped off the screen at me first were all these flag icons next to the visitors. British flags, Brazilian flags, Canada, Singapore, South Africa, Honduras, Ecuador, Egypt.... What the fuck are these farrrreigners looking at?

Bald.

Men (I'm assuming they're men) from all over the world are reading my post about baldness, partial baldness, possible shaving my head to go with the full baldness look, and of course mocking Carlos Boozer from the Bulls who has a full beard with a bald dome. Imagine having a full head of thick hair....and shaving it off voluntarily. Shit's fucked up I tell ya.)

It's not just visitors from around the world who are reading my Bald post, there are some Yanks who also pop in, but the array of flags from other countries shows quite clearly that men from all over the world are really fucked up in their heads because they think they're fucked up on top of their heads.

What is it in human beings that is so obsessed with this patch of hair (or lack of it) on top of our heads? Consider the billions of dollars spent every year on hair care. Shampoos, conditioners, rinses, Grecian formulas, hair coloring, uncoloring, cutting, trimming, styling, shaping & changing...

When did this start? I see old pictures of my dad and his buddies from the 1960s and they were all pretty much sporting the part-on-one-side standard Dick Van Dyke style.

I acknowledge that the el feminitos have always spent more time (and money) styling and maintaining their dos, but I can't imagine my mom's generation taking hair-care to the extreme that we've reached, and so this hair obsession must have started sometime in the 70s.

Somewhere along the line here, we have begun to pay way too much attention to something that grows out of our bodies. When I consider hair in its most basic form, it's really sort of unpleasant which is probably why they call it "unsightly hair." On the one hand, we pour hot wax on part of our body to get rid of the shit because who the fuck wants hair down there? On the other hand, the exact same follicles are squirting out these long strands of fine vellus or thick stuff that is made mainly of the protein keratin, becomes such an obsession that we stop and look at our own reflections in store windows.

Some guys are so tormented by a lack of the shit on top of their heads (said to be caused by an excess amount of testosterone you fucking morons) that they spend thousands of dollars on weaves, plugs, transplants and worst of all....fucking toupees.

Maybe I shouldn't be wondering when we became this obsessed over something as basic as a patch of hair on top of our heads, and instead I should wonder why. I use the first person plural pronoun, although frankly I don't belong in this group. I spend about 1 minute and 9 seconds a day screwing around with my hair but I am a member of this society, and as such I feel it's my duty to get to the bottom of this. Who in the hell decided that our hair is so fucking important?

After much consideration I've decided that I blame the same people Carlin blamed for most of the ills of modern society.