Sans Fig Leaf
"Fuzzy-Wuzzy was a bear"
8 February, 2001
I have an ambivalent relationship with my hair.
I had body hair before my 12th birthday. There were only two other boys my age at school who had body hair at that stage. By age 13 I had the hairest arms and legs of anyone in my class and was in a dead heat with another guy on the chest hair front. By the age of 15 I had a receding hairline.
We ascribe all sorts of meanings to hair: body hair, hair style, facial hair. When my body hair first started coming in, it illicited a lot of teasing in the shower room before gym class. The following year it was the guys who didn't have any to speak of who were the subject of ridicule. The assumption was that the boys who weren't showing much yet were less manly.
On the more visible front, how long a guy wore his head hair and what style it was cut in, said a lot about your family. Short hair meant your parents were moderate-conservatives. Longish hair (but not too long) and styled meant your parents were moderate-liberals. Long, shaggy hair meant your parents were either negligent or commies--or both.
When I got into high school only the truly hopeless dweebs and geeks had short hair. All the cool guys had long hair, often very long, very thick, and styled. It seemed everyone owned a blow dryer, even the football players.
So I had long hair. In the early stages of balding you can get away with long, shaggy hair, so most people don't notice the receding hairline. I got used to having long hair. I got used to most of the guys I knew having long hair.
Facial hair was another matter. While my mom didn't care how long I wore my hair, it was accepted as an absolute fact in her family that any man who wore a beard or sideburns was a criminal, a satanist, or at the very least of loose virtue. I didn't have any strong feelings about it myself back then, although the times I grew a beard I thought I looked better with it than without. Part of the problem is that when I am clean-shaven, I get "five o-clock shadow" about two hours after I shave.
As I moved through college and into the working world, I find that hair is still used by many to deduce all sorts of things about you. Interestingly, this is just as true for the things out of my control as those in. In the gay community, for example, the mere presence of so much hair on my arms and so forth, combined with my bald head, makes many jump to all sorts of assumptions about my taste in music, movies, decorating, and men. These assumptions run so strong, that there are whole groups of men who don't even care to be acquaintences because they're not interested in "that stuff."
In many cases, neither am I. Oh, well.
Fashions have changed. Shaved heads are more hip in many social circles these days than long hair. But that adolescent programming runs deep into odd corners of the brain. I have gotten out of the habit of thinking about haircuts. I can go months and months without it crossing my mind.
Last summer I meant to get my hair cut very short, in the classic "businessman's cut." Not as any fashion statement, it's just nicer in hot weather not to have all that hair hanging on my neck and shoulders. But I kept forgetting. I would say to myself, "I'll get my hair cut this weekend," and then I'd forget to go. That continued through the fall and now into winter.
A few Fridays ago I woke up with a scratchy throat. I'd had a full night's sleep, but I felt run-down. I wasn't certain if I was actually coming down with a cold or if I was having a bad allergy day, but I called in sick to be on the safe side, and crawled back into bed.
Michael, who works graveyard, got up in the afternoon and started getting ready to run some errands. He was going to deposit his paycheck and get his hair cut. He expressed the opinion that a little fresh air might do me some good. He suggested that if I'd walk with him up to the bank and the hair place, he could buy me lunch on the way back.
One thing led to another and soon I was sitting in a chair watching a guy cut all my hair off. It felt nice. A load had been lifted, literally, from my shoulders.
The following week at work several co-workers expressed shock at my lack of shagginess. One didn't recognize me until I said his name after he passed me without saying "hello." Others jumped to the conclusion that I was going to job interviews and preparing to abandon the company.
A lot of my co-workers have changed their appearance during this transition. One guy who used to have a shaved head, one of those odd-shaped goatees, and lots of jewelry in various parts of his face, is suddenly clean-shaven, wearing almost no jewelry, and has grown out his hair. He's also wearing a button-down shirt and tie. That's just one example. I admit that I assumed he was doing it because when the transition is over, he'll be working in the marketing division of the behemoth company that has bought us out.
Maybe it's a coincidence, just as my haircut is. Maybe he was just ready for a change.
--Sigmund Freud