Eye Opener

Only recently have I started valuing hair and acknowledging the impact of hairstyle on one’s personality. Having enjoyed a boy cut for the last ten years, long hair are surely a handful. They say that the emergence of the “bob” style for women occurred in tandem with the granting of women’s suffrage, and it was certainly associated with freedom, ease and practicality.

So, inspite of every once in a while, being tempted to go back to the lowest energy state possible (just like sub-atomic particles), I plan to ward off these feelings and stand firm. This unprecedented resolve is primarily attributed to The Encyclopedia of Personal Relations. I learnt that our hairstyle, besides clothes, forms an integral part of our personality that is, what we put across to the people around us. Our hair and its style are related to our sensuality (and here’s the final punch), sensuality is directly proportional to the length of the hair. This means, all my life I fared miserably when it came to the Sensuality test and scored a big nadir.

It further said that women who are not interested in fashion and clothing design tend to be intelligent, confident and rather private. I agree whole-heartedly. It went on to say that men who are only interested in the practical purpose of their clothing tend to be cautious people with low social motivation and a sense of dissatisfaction. I wonder if that’s really true. Nonetheless, what one must remember is that the most important point about developing a personal style is to ACCEPT yourself.

I recently read the article 'When women go bald' in this month’s edition of Discover magazine. It dealt with alopecia universalis – a genetically influenced autoimmune disease that can strike at any age, causing all the body’s hair to fall out (even eyebrows and eyelashes). Then there is alopecia areata – a genetically determined autoimmune disease in which the body’s T cells (a part of our defense mechanism) identify hair follicle as foreign invaders and try to destroy them. A somewhat rare disorder is Papular atrichia in which the all the hair follicles are destroyed.

At the other end of the spectrum are the people suffering from Hypertrichosis, sometimes called wolf people who instead of growing normal facial hair, develop thick, pigmenred scalp hair called terminal hair all over their faces. (Ripley’s Believe it or Not on AXN channel has showcased them oh too often).

All this and more made me so thankful of my (albeit) thick hair growth and reminded me of my favourite saying growing up – I cried that I had no shoes till I saw a man who had no feet.

The article featured Ms. Christiano, who became a leading researcher in this field after being diagnosed with alopecia areata. I conclude with what one of her Palestinian colleagues once said to her, “In Arabic, there’s a saying that if there’s a crisis, sometimes it benefits other people” and added, “maybe, it’s a good thing you had this problem.”