Hair Beliefs, Part II

I've never shaved my head. The closest I came to the bald look was having it cut down to an inch all around, which felt so, in a word, freeing. Not only did my head suddenly feel light as air--in psychological terms, it also took a load off. Hair is a visual cue to others--it's how they recognize us. When I went from an abundant, curly perm to almost no hair, a friend in the grocery store walked right past me. Never saw me. My most identifiable feature was gone. I had temporarily become invisible.

Future Buddha Prince Siddhartha (in his renunciation of his worldly life in India's royal court in the 6th century B.C.) made a radical gesture by shaving his head, hair being at the time a symbol of royalty and the excesses associated with it. Afterwards, the prince called himself only by his last name--Gautama--and wandered outside the palace walls, a vagabond in search of wisdom from spiritual teachers of the day.

To this day, the initiations of Buddhist monks and nuns often includes the practice of head shaving.

While most people spend lots of time and money on their hair, Buddhist monks and nuns shave their heads. They are no longer concerned with outward beauty, but with developing their spiritual lives. The shaven head is a reminder that the monks and nuns have renounced the home life and are a part of the Sangha.

(The Basic Teaching of Buddha)

Oddly, though the Buddha went to all that trouble to get rid of his hair, there is a cultish, reliquary component to the Buddha's hair. According to some, it's still with us. Apparently, in China, carefully preserved locks of hair believed to be the Buddha's were uncovered in Hangzhou in the ruins of a pagoda. And as recently as 2007, Bangladesh donated a few strands of Buddha's hair to Sri Lanka. So for all the detachment from this world symbolized by shaving off one's hair, a sacredness has grown around the possession of Buddha's hair that gives one pause.

I think Buddha did not intend for his hair to be so obsessively preserved--quite the opposite. I especially like the Enlightenment Ward's musings on the subject. In a nutshell, hair is a problem only if it matters too much.

Hair Beliefs, Part I

I've insisted from the start there's something uncanny about hair. There are no end of religious views on it, in spite of the fact that, scientifically speaking, humans are "among the most hairless of all mammals."

The most important function of hair in mammals is that of insulating against cold by conserving body heat.
(Encyclopedia Britannica)

So perhaps we magnify its allure. Or not:

The differing colours and colour patterns in hair coats can also serve purposes of camouflage and of sexual recognition and attraction among the members of a species.

And get this:

In essence, each hair is a cylinder of compacted and keratinized cells growing from a pit in the skin—the hair follicle. ... The epidermal components of an active hair follicle consist of an outer layer of polyhedral cells, forming the outer root sheath, and an inner horny stratum, the inner root sheath.

Aha! Hair is horny. So that's the source of the religious crackdowns.

I'm a Christian, hence, a follower of Christ, so I read what Paul has written in the New Testament as I would read what any other Christian has to say--with a grain of salt. Strictly literalist Christians, on the other hand, rely on I Corinthians 11:4-10 as their ultimate hair authority.

Any man who prays or prophesies with something on his head disgraces his head, but any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled disgraces her head—it is one and the same thing as having her head shaved. For if a woman will not veil herself, then she should cut off her hair; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or to be shaved, she should wear a veil. For a man ought not to have his head veiled, since he is the image and reflection of God; but woman is the reflection of man. ... For this reason a woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.

Whoa, wait a minute--angels? Yes, at the beginning of Genesis 6:

When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. ... The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterwards—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.

Okay, the above passage doesn't specifically mention hair, but a common interpretation of the above goes like this--there were both angels and humans intermingling back then. The human daughters were fair of hair, and hence charmed the "sons of God" (aka the fallen angels or Nephilim, the Rephaim or Gibbowrim) to have sex with them. And these same daughters gave birth to some superhero-caliber warriors. I kid you not. Hence, the head coverings.

Furthermore, Orthodox Christians (and United Pentecostals, and other denominations as well) believe a woman should not cut her hair, also due to Paul's writings on head coverings (I Corinthians 11:14-15).

Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is degrading to him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering.

Hmmph. I myself like to glorify that very covering. I think of hair as art, one of the best parts of ourselves, of expression, beauty, joy. Why not make the most of this salient feature?

Thus endeth, Part I. Stay tuned for the sequels. In the spirit of honest inquiry, I'll explore Hair Beliefs in faiths other than my own--Hindu, Islamic, Buddhist, Judaic--whatever I can find. From what I've learned so far, we're in for a hair raising good time.

Hair Inheritance

We blame our parents whenever we can. I can't blame my mom for my hair, though--hers was a beautiful black, thick and glossy with healthy bounce. Mine is fine, straight and brown, making up in quantity what it lacks in quality. I wish I'd received a free haircut every time I heard the stylist say: "You've got a lot of hair." It would have saved me a bundle.

Of course there are other attributes I inherited from Mom--though she was only quick to point out the negative ones. I wonder now at her self esteem, the way she owned to our similarities only when it came to failings.

"I'm afraid you take after me," she'd say often, referring to my big bones, my haphazard organizational skills, or my general clumsiness.

I still wonder if she thought I was a chip off the old block in good ways, too.

For better or worse, I was born a blonde. During puberty, my hair transformed to a mouse brown shade, the color working its way from the outside layers in. At twelve years old, when I wore my hair in pigtails, the back of my head revealed a distinct line between the brown of the outside layers and the blonde beneath.

"That's so ... weird," friends commented until, with typical adolescent self-consciousness, I stopped wearing pigtails altogether.

Since my daughter refused to wear pigtails (or tie her hair back for any other reason) since birth, I'm not sure if her hair faded from blonde to brown in a similar manner, but fade it did.

She still hasn't forgiven me. "It's all your fault," she says. "I got your ugly brown hair. I wish it was still blonde."

"Yes, it is all my fault," I admit, "but it's also my fault that you've got dimples and that charming smile."

She rolls her eyes, but at least she knows I see the good in myself as well as the bad. While some traits are inherited, others don't have to be.

Hair Block

I have a friend who has no hair. He may shave it, or it may be genetic baldness--we've never really talked about it. He always wears a hat on his head, sometimes a baseball hat, sometimes a knit cap. What with the dark circles under his eyes, and his perpetual five o'clock shadow, he looks pretty thuggish.

He's on my mind this weekend because on April 6 he has to appear in King County Superior Court on a Burglary 2 charge. He's told me it's a case of mistaken identity. There doesn't seem to be any proof he did it, other than some witnesses from a dark night who confronted him on a different street in a different neighborhood over a year ago, but it's going to trial anyhow. I want to advise him to wear not just his knit cap, but a crash helmet when he appears before the judge. My friend is a such good-hearted soul, well-meaning and sincere, but his appearance says otherwise.

As often as we've heard the saying "don't judge a book by it's cover," it's what we rely on in our everyday lives. For instance, when I originally told my friend Jo about my hairpisodes blog, she said: "Oh, I've got one for you. Did I ever tell you about the time I got called for jury duty?"

"When was this?"

"When I lived in Boston. There was no way I had the time to get snagged into one of those trial things. So before I went down there I punked out my hair. I really did a number on it. I spiked it and dyed it--you should have seen it when I got through. My God, it looked just awful. Needless to say, I didn't get called to serve on a jury. All the lawyers had to do was take one look at me and they let me go."

I don't think my friend who's going to trial next week could pull off something like Jo did. Short of investing in a toupe, there's little hope for his hair anyhow. He plays it straight all the time, is painfully honest, and there's an air about him of someone who is lost, trying to find his way in a world where he's been overlooked. Without the hat, my friend's smooth, caramel-colored skull looks naked and startling, as vulnerable as a newborn babe's. I just hope and pray no harm comes to him. Please keep him in your thoughts on April 6.

Added April 26: Twenty days later, after many delays and postponements, the trial has yet to begin. A group of people have written letters to the court testifying to our friend's good character--there's now a rumor the charges will be dropped. Here's hoping.

Added May 5: Whoooeee! Charges dismissed. The judge read the letters, in other words, stopped judging the book by its cover and looked inside. Now my friend can get on with his life. Power to justice!

The World According to the Protege

Being remade is a process of discovery. For my recent haircut, I put myself in the hands of a protégé.

“What’s a protégé?” I asked when the receptionist offered this level of stylist as the only opening of the day.

“It’s usually someone who’s new, they’re learning, training for our salon. They don’t cost so much, only 30 dollars.”

“Why not?” I heard myself say. "12:30? I'll be there."

A couple of hours later I swiveled before the in-training scrutiny of a woman named Kelly.

Kelly wore the black pants and white top of the salon, her black straight hair unexceptional, her black-rimmed glasses thick. She frowned at my visit sheet, where the progress of my hair is logged every time I come. I’ve always wondered what they write there: tricky coloring formulas? Or, more likely: “Keeps changing her mind.” “Watch out for this one.” “Doesn’t have a clue.”

“Just a trim,” I say, flopping the folds of my black smock around me as if it's the cloak of a queen. “It’s been a while, so go ahead and take an inch and a half off everywhere.”

Kelly and I exchange pleasantries through the wash and rinse, agreeing about water temperature and which line of hair care products to use.

But back in the chair, as I sit wet and dripping with anticipation, the first thing she does is apply a texturizing razor at the back of my neck. I feel and hear the scraping shear of the blade and the five-alarm fire sirens go off.

“What are you doing?” I ask. Demand imperiously, to be exact.

“Texturizing.”

“No, not that, I’ll get a rat’s nest back there.”

“It’ll shape better.”

“A blunt cut. I don’t care if it bulges. I want a blunt cut.”

Kelly switches to scissors and begins again. Squinting, she moves around my head, trimming barely a 1/4-inch. An inch and a half! I scream inwardly. But I keep quiet. I’ve been here before.

Several years ago now, in Joe’s salon near my old job in north Seattle, he switched my hair part from the left side to the right side of my head without so much as a by-your-leave.

“I part it on the other side,” I said.

“I know. But you shouldn’t. Your left eye is bigger than your right. You should part your hair over the smaller eye. It balances the face.”

I’ve followed his advice, and frankly, it does look better. So I watch Kelly and hold my peace. Maybe, like Joe, Kelly has a good sense of hair style. Maybe by my next visit I’ll hear she skipped the "Team" level entirely, arrowed straight to “Master”. I break the stiff silence.

“I like what you’re doing,” I say.

Kelly leans toward me, unsure she’s heard me right. I say it again. Her face softens and she gets back to work. I practice relaxing my own features in the mirror, study my eyes to see if I can spot the bigger one. Take a deep breath. It’s like I’m her protégé; I might even learn something. In the mirror, I catch Kelly’s eye and we smile.

Hair Twirling

It sounds sexier than it is. Hair twirling, something I've been doing since my first conscious memory, is considered a self-manipulation habit. I always do it with my left hand, on the back left part of my skull. I twirl and wrap and weave my fingers and twist my hair up tight, then fold and push the knot against my skull, then release it, untangle it, and start all over. Again and again. Unconsciously. My parents and brothers and friends all called attention to it when I was young. "It's a bad habit," they told me. "Stop it." "Cut it out."

Well, I tried that. I cut my hair short enough that I could no longer twirl it, but I simply played with the ends instead, pinching them up and pressing my finger tip on the brush. From time to time over the years I focused on trying to stop, but it's been years now since I cared enough to put in the effort. Today, though, when writing up 25 Things about myself (that Facebook challenge currently in circulation), I typed it in as Thing #11, and there it was. What, I wondered, is the reason, scientifically speaking, for this hair twirling behavior? So I did what any red-blooded Internet user does: I googled "hair twirling habit."

There were 114,000 results. The first link I clicked on, a web site for clinicians, harbored grim news. Hair Twirling is considered a mild form of Hair Pulling, a much more unpleasant habit, medically referred to as Trichotillomania. Hair Pulling is when you actually nervously tear your hair out of your scalp. People have to wear wigs to hide their disorder. Worse, according to the site, "among adults, women account for 70% to 93% of all cases." So much for light-hearted inquiry.

But it's not like I yank out my hair--I only fiddle with it--so I surfed for something tamer. I found ten posts in The Long Hair Community, confessional and rambling, not all that enlightening. There are many parenting sites out there, moms agonizing about how to get their kids to stop, pediatricians full of advice, link after link with suggestions. At a link called: Am I Nuts? a Yale psychologist insists it's done in self-defense. "Chances are you developed your bookish hair twirling as a body-language clue to people around you. What does your finger in your locks say? It says, 'Leave me alone! I'm reading.'" Now that was more like it.

Still, I longed for something more comforting, something akin to what the hair twirling process itself does for me--it comforts. So next, I clicked on Nervous Habits and the Chakra System. Here you can almost smell the incense and hear the soft, meditative chimes and drumming. "Nervous habits related to 'hair' such as twirling or pulling hair, are often linked to the head or the crown chakra. This is about boredom, lack of concentration, consciousness, a desire to open the crown chakra and 'see' beyond emotional problems." Aaahhhh. Yes, much better. So when I twirl my hair, it's my mode of transcendence, of seeing beyond. I take a deep breath and close my eyes. Yes, that's the reason I was looking for. Unconsciously, I lift a tuft of hair in my hand and start to twirl.

A time to seek, and a time to lose

I chopped off my hair when we left Buffalo, home of hot and spicy chicken wings and Friday fish fries. It was time to look forward to a new life in Seattle.

During that last week before we left town, I stopped by the hair salon and told my stylist to cut off my hair, right down to an inch all around.

"Have you talked to your husband?" Patti asked.

"Look, he'll thank me. We owe money to just about everyone. Until he passes the bar and gets a real job, haircuts are a luxury we can't afford. The longer I can get by without a cut the better. I mean it, get rid of these curls."

Patti disapproved, but she cooperated. She knew I was right: the term "hair permanent" is a lie. Perms flop and frizz and fade; they require constant maintenance. I left the salon that afternoon with a sense of release, of liberation not only from frayed, misbehaved ends, but also from a Buffalo lifestyle I was all too happy to kiss good-bye.

I'd gotten talked into my first permanent several years ago, during the time I'd been working as a waitress at ChiChi's Mexican Restaurant. The bouncy curls were a fitting complement to the flounces of my waitressing uniform with its white puffy blouse and orange, too-short flamenco skirt. I'd hated that uniform almost as much as I'd hated the job. As soon as I could manage it, I served up my last chimichanga and moved on to work as a secretary at an advertising agency.

With my hair chopped off, all that remained were the fond farewells. My going-away party at the ad agency was a boozy, hilarious affair. My account executive bosses awarded me with a yellow rain hat (because it always rains in Seattle) and pink lingerie (Irene's boyfriend was an underwear salesman). Amid countless champagne toasts, I made glowing speeches of thanks, but mostly rubbed it in about my great future: Pacific Coast seafood, mountainous wilderness, the Northwest's thriving economy. I could have said more, about Buffalo's pernicious snow, chemical contaminations (think North Tonawanda and Love Canal), and high rate of colon cancer. But I didn't, it would have spoiled the mood.

The last two days, smack dab in the midst of packing up our Colvin Avenue apartment, of all the organizing and farewells, I came down with an excruciating pain in my butt. I could barely walk, let alone sit down. My posterior screamed bloody murder. It was bizarre and debilitating, and as time went on got worse, not better. Frantically, I made a doctor's appointment. The doctor diagnosed it as a thrombosed hemorrhoid, which he said he'd have to remove surgically. The earliest he could do it was the morning Dave and I planned to leave Buffalo forever.

Departure day arrived at last. Bright and early, the car packed to the gills, we headed south, only to veer off almost as soon as we'd entered I-90 for my last-minute surgery. It didn't take long. The shocker was the post-operative care instructions, which were to either recline or stand, not sit, for the next four to six hours.

Thus, as we re-entered I-90 West toward Seattle, I was forced to kneel on the passenger seat and face backward at Buffalo's rusting horizon, a city I'd been so anxious to leave behind. Though heavily drugged to kill the pain, I nonetheless felt a sharp twinge of remorse, of aching loss, a genuine affection for the laid back, fun-loving town. As the skyline receded in the distance, I finally realized it was a town I'd come to call home.