The Significance of Hair

It is a fact that of all my deepest darkest fears, by far the greatest is one I have no power to prevent, should that dark day loom.

Myself and my best mate were discussing it in the pub recently. 'What would you do if it started?'

If you woke up one morning to find that you could feel your scalp...

That it was happening.
The curse of the male had come...

Because it's true. Most men fear it. And me being vain as hell, and very much in love with my curls, the idea that one day I might have to choose between looking like Montgomery Burns or going the whole hog and having a totally naked head, is not something I relish.

And yet many women say they find bald men attractive.

Doesn't actually seem to matter though. For some reason, that doesn't concern me. What concerns me, is the fact that I wouldn't have a beautiful head of hair. I'm proud of the head of hair IN ITSELF. It's part of the image I have of self. And that's important.

I suppose it was this train of thought got me thinking to attitudes to hair. What does it mean to us?

Well, first is the obvious observation, that women do not by and large tend to suffer baldness naturally. Cases such as Gail Porter stand out.



But interestingly, I find that apparently 'bald women' is a high hitter in the Google search engines. It seems that a lot of men out there find bald women attractive.

Odd, you might think.

Except of course, there IS a certain logic to it.

It's interesting that we tend to groom our body hair generally for simple reasons of hygiene. Although the beard comes and goes with fashion, generally even when it is semi-fashionable, it remains a minority possession. Generally, we seem to prefer clean shaven. Not only women, but most of us males seem to prefer how our face looks without facial hair.

In many ways, hair on the head IS slightly unhygienic, not to mention hazardous. In many ways, it would seem an oddity of human culture that in fact, we DO retain hair on the head at all- either sex.

And the answer would seem to lie in aesthetics. It's kind of like natural clothing.

And I suppose this explains our dual attitude to it. Hair on the head is, effectively, an item of clothing. That is psychologically how we see it, that is the function it fulfills. It fulfills no other function whatsoever, it is an adornment.

So baldness is a bit like nudity. If a man has an attractive face, baldness emphasises it. If he doesn't, baldness emphasises that too.

And I guess the covert interest that has been noted- that many men are interested in looking at attractive bald women is PRECISELY for that reason. It's not usual you get to see a woman THAT naked. And if she's beautiful her baldness emphasises it. If not, it emphasises the reverse. Being judged aesthetically without the adornment of hair is something many men have to deal with one day having to face. The idea of women facing that type of judgement is still, I guess, a novelty.

This would explain why it is the OPPOSITE sex who finds baldness attractive, but most men- and women- fear being bald themselves. Because in a deep rooted psychological way, it feels like nakedness.

Just as we wouldn't go out naked, we fear the fact of going out without our hair. We WANT that adornment. It's pride. And in terms of adornment, long flowing locks are beautiful, they give us dignity, status.



And this moves to the rather odd position of how we view hair as a adornment. Long hair is not quite as acceptable on a male than it is on a woman.
But I'll be honest, if I could have shoulder length curls, I would.

Because the point of hair as an adornment, as with clothing as an adornment, is precisely that.

I often think they had the best solution in the eighteenth century. Every male divested himself of his natural hair and got a long flowing wig. He had total freedom over what his hair should look like.

I'd love to have a set of long, flowing wigs reaching down past my shoulders, lustrous, flowing, tightly curled. I'd have one in black, one in brown, and one in a golden blonde.

I wonder if it will go in that direction. I wonder if one day the culture will change so that no one really has natural hair, which can get caught in things, is potentially unhygienic and over which the owner has little control.

If no one is seen publicly bald, but people wear their hair like they now wear shirts or dresses, an adornment over which the wearer has full choice, but to be seen out without hair really would be like being seen naked.



And if seeing your partner without their wig will be part of seeing them naked, without their wig you see their true beauty, or lack thereof.

I wonder if one day, it will be a part of normal human life- that magic moment when you see your partner for the first time without their hair.