HAIR

My Mother handled Col's hair as if it was live snakes.

Have you ever wondered why humans were left with hair on top of their heads and not much anywhere else post the Homo Erectus stage of evolution? In fact why did hair make an exodus from the body?

At first I thought it must have been the result of humans covering themselves against the cold and the elements so that evolution, taking the hint, made a substantial amount of the body hair drop away.

Then I realised that humans had lost their hirsute covering before leaving Africa and its relative warmth.  Clothing, therefore, doesn't explain it.  I think hair must have remained on the head to protect the skull and brain but why does our head hair grow when that of most other animals grows to a certain length and stops?  The body hair that we do retain only grows to a certain length as well.

Some dogs have hair that grows constantly but this is probably the result of genetic mutation when humans interfered with breeding to create certain types of characteristics in dogs.

Whatever the reason we have retained head hair, it has provided humans with a lot of fun.  Not only that, it doesn't hurt if you cut it and you can manipulate it in all sorts of ways.  I also have a little theory.   Let me try it on you.

Intellect and self-consciousness are a bit like unstable atoms.  Things whirl around changing places and making connections.  It's remarkable we're not all quite mad.  As the brain evolved and self-awareness and thought came about we were fortunate in still having the basic desires of hunger and sex to keep them under control; to give them some direction.  And then there is hair.  What an interesting little distraction that is to a newly formed intellect.  So if a human is feeling a tad unstable or depressed there's always that mop on top which never behaves itself or does what it should that we can attack before turning our angst on some innocent party standing nearby.

Sound crazy?  Well I'll get back to that at a personal level but for now...

In ancient times women discovered that using certain fruits and herbs could alter their hair colour.  Henna and lemon were probably among the first to be used.  Henna was used as a red dye and lemon as a lightener particularly when out in the sun.

The Swedes had the monopoly on blonde and this desirable shade was often accompanied by blue eyes.  While grey and white hair signify age for some reason the equally pale blonde does not.  Perhaps it is more like the sun and has warmth in the tones.  The Northern peoples, who were the first natural blondes, saw little sunlight and this caused the exodus of Melatonin from their skin and hair.  In fact its absence caused them to appear more like that which they had lost, and that was light.  So in a sunless land, hair shone like the missing star.

In 1907 Eugene Schueller, a French chemist, invented "Aureole" a hair lightener that didn't damage the hair.  Its name later changed to "L'Oreal", the company that is still a leader in cosmetic and hair care research today.

I find it is very interesting that, unlike eyes, the colour of hair when passed on genetically seems to become a mixture of the parents, or it can throw up a recessive gene just to be perverse.  Eye colour follows certain rules but have you noticed how a child's hair can be a combination of its parents' colour?

I first noticed this in Eurasions.  The child of a Caucasion and an Asian didn't necessarily turn out with the hair of the Asian parent or that of the Caucasion.  It was often a dark-reddish brown.  My son is a mixture of my natural dark brown hair and his father's blond hair.  He is light brown or ash.  I dye my hair blonde and people get a shock these days when, at my age, they notice my roots coming through a splendid, grey free dark brown.

I inherited this gene from my mother and her mother.  Neither had a grey hair in their heads when they passed away, my mother at eighty-one.  My hair was light brown mouse in my youth but decided to darken as I grew older.

When I was about seven my mother's father told me that if I didn't eat the crusts on my bread, my hair wouldn't curl.  He was stunned when I told him I didn't want curly hair.  It must have been much prized by his generation.

My mother probably did eat her crusts but to no avail.  Her hair was flat as a pancake and fine as silk.  She spent her whole life torturing and tormenting these tragic strands to her will.  Sadly she tried to do the same to mine.  I asked her why she kept her hair short and she insisted it wouldn't grow but, given what she did to it, that wasn't surprising.  It wouldn't have had the resolve or strength of will left to grow.  I know it could because there were pictures of her in her youth when it reached her shoulders.

My mother was a neat freak and that meant not a strand of hair was allowed to stray out of place.  As a child I would walk into her room as she sprayed her hair with pressure pack hairspray.  There is some chemical in it that has a very pungeant odour.  I would run from the room.  To this day, if I must use hairspray, it is aerosol only.

Mum felt the need to exert power over me by controlling my hair.  She insisted it was kept short.  It was bad enough I was given two boys names without adding the insult of boyish hair.  Mum's mother had auburn hair to her waist which she kept in a bun.  I find it odd that Mum had such an aversion to long hair because of this but I believe she had issues with her mother and maybe that was the reason, but don't we all?

She told me that I could grow my hair when I reached twelve years of age.  At twelve I tried, but she bribed, she cajoled, she complained, and I gave in until I was eighteen.  My childhood friend Colleen had gorgeous long hair that her mother plaited each side and looped up and tied with ribbons.

When Col's mother went to hospital to have a baby, Col who was seven at the time, stayed with us.  Mum attempted to do her hair.  It was only recently that Col told me what happened.  She said that when my mother tried to plait her hair, she had handled it as if it was a live snake.  She could barely stand to touch it.  Col said it was such a mess that when she arrived at school, she re-did it herself.  It was the first time she had ever done her own hair.

It is obvious that my early obsessive-compulsive disorder came from my mother.  The very strange thing is that she didn't recognise that she had it.  While I beat mine, she had hers for life.  On Friday afternoon when she would pick me up from boarding school, I would comb my hair before seeing her.  I would get into the car and Mum would, almost without fail, tell me my hair was a mess.  I would say I had just combed it.  She would reply, "Well comb it again."

She also complained about having to pick me up at all.  On Mondays she drove me to school and on Fridays she collected me.  I was a very considerate child and tried never to upset her but this complaint fell on deaf ears.  I hated the school and didn't want to be there.  It was just revenge that she had to do this for me.

Once I got my own way with my hair she couldn't stand it.  When I was in my thirties Rob, my husband, actually forbade her to mention my hair at all again, ever.  He could see the effect it had on me and he could also see she was irrational in regard to it.  It really doesn't pay to have a parent constantly criticise you no matter what your age.

My hair has been long ever since I turned eighteen except for one disastrous occasion when a bad hairdresser bleached it off.  I was not happy for the three years it took to grow back.  For some reason I like being blonde.  I call myself a psychological blonde, but my roots insist on remaining dark brown.  I'm rather proud of the lack of grey but like Mum, my hair is silky and flat as a pancake.

I wear it just above shoulder length now and the beauty of longish hair is being able to pull it up into a bun or a ponytail.  Also, in winter I cover my neck and ears with it at night so they don't get cold.  It is a lovely feeling against my skin and makes me feel cosy.

Something lovely happened when Mum was in the nursing home.  She finally said nice things about my hair.  She was an entirely different person.  Perhaps the mini strokes had changed her personality or perhaps, once Dad had died, she finally turned to me.  Sadly no one could maintain her hair to her standards once she was there.  It was cut shorter than before and lay flat against her head.

All those years of putting rollers in it to give it body had gone.  She did need the body as her face was round and she had large cheekbones but oddly, she quite liked her new gamin style.  I truly wish I could have afforded a hairdresser to keep it plumped and perfect just for her sense of grooming.  I don't hold a grudge, I just miss her.

She had been a hyper-critical mother and her lack of being able to praise me taught me to always praise my own son.  It took me years to develop a sense of self-confidence for, whether she realised it or not, she was always putting me down.  I also learned that you must apologise to your children when you are wrong.  My mother never once in my life apologised to me.  My son isn't aware of the good things I did as a mother.  It's sad to say that a child only really notices when parents do the wrong thing.  Nonetheless I consider this a success for he is a mentally healthy young man.

My mother's obsession with my hair was simply a symptom of her need to control all her surroundings.  As her dementia grew the degree of her problem became glaringly obvious in many other areas as well.  I'm sorry she wasn't able to get help for it but the first thing is to recognise that you have a problem.  It was channeled into her hair and thankfully that probably saved the rest of us from worse repercussions as it bore the brunt of it.

Hair, therefore, has its uses at a deeply psychological level and I'm sure there are people out there with lots of similar stories.  A lot of our personality is described by the way we wear our hair and the way we try to control it.  A psychologist should write a book on it, if one already hasn't.

END