Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow, Back Again In A Couple Weeks

Because the media is longer based on journalism but rather infotainment with bimbo airheads (I'm looking at you Soledad) reading teleprompters, I have to hear way more about Britney Spears than I want to. Well, anything about Britney is more than I want to hear. The current news about her is, of course you've heard, that she shaved her head. Now besides the fact that this isn't actually news by any definition of the word, the other stupid thing about it is that just about every damn print and TV media outlet has referred to the shaving of her head as evidence of some sort of "meltdown" she is having.

When exactly did the whole world (or at least the media) become as bat-shit crazy as my mother?

IT"S FUCKING HAIR! Who cares?

Jesus H. fucking Christ, it grows back. It even grows back pretty damn quick. What the hell is the issue?

I will never understand people's obsessions with how other people cut their hair, what kind of clothes they wear, the piercings they may have or their tattoos. Damn, let people do what they want and leave them alone. It's called personal expression.

Especially hair. I mean, shit. It's not like a tattoo that takes expensive laser surgery to fix if you don't like it. All you have to do is wait a little while and you can change it again. That's the damn beauty of hair, you can try whatever you want and it doesn't matter. But for some reason it seemed to matter to my insane mother when I was a teenager.

The crazy woman was obsessed with my hair when I was younger. Well, she was obsessed with pretty much the entire look I chose for myself, no matter what phase it was. Whatever I did she seemed to hate and acted like it was the end of the world.

I was a new-waver in high school, so you can imagine what it was that I did. Lots of black in the wardrobe. Haircuts that would involve the back and sides being buzz cut, and then maybe spiked at the top or long and hanging down in front of my face. For a while I had the left side of my head shaved and long hair hanging down the right side. I kind of pulled off a Robert Smith from The Cure look for a short time, though that was just too hard to keep doing for long. Once, I had my friend Andy shave the back of my head in the shape of a peace sign. My mother went ballistic on that one. She also went crazy (well crazier than she already is anyway) when I had my hair buzzed all over except for about two-inch wide spot on the front right-center with about 6 inches of length that hung down in front over my right eye. It was my pseudo-punk look. Sometimes I braided it, and other times I used a crimper on it. I remember really liking that one a lot.

But my mother thought it was the end of the fucking world sometimes. That and my clothes. One thing I remember that really drove her crazy was when (and I did this for years) I used to wear one black Chuck Taylor All-Star high top and one white one. The fights she used to pick with me over that were ridiculous. Or when I wore the bowling shoes I bought used from a bowling alley. You know the ones, the multi-colored alley rental types.

What I wore and how I cut or colored my hair seemed to be my other's obsession. It was really a side effect of her wanting me to fit in and be popular. She had dreams of her kids doing things like run for homecoming king or queen and being one of the cool kids in high school. I, of course, had no interest in that at all and just wanted high school to be over as quickly as possible. Run for homecoming king? Hell, I never even went to a homecoming dance.

My mother wanted me to be the Molly Ringwald or Emilio Estevez characters from Breakfast Club, and instead she got Alley Sheedy. Except I did have friends. Just not the kind my mother wanted me to have.

And she thought she could get me to change by insulting me every chance she got. I think my hair became her top concern in life from the mid-eighties until I graduated college and bolted to Seattle in the mid-nineties. She used to accuse me of doing it just to piss her off, when it was really just about me wanting to be weird and arty. That it pissed her off was just a bonus.

She finally got over that obsession, I think. Now she's obsessed with Jesus. But that's a whole other weirdness. I think I preferred her insulting me over praying for me.

But the point is, get the hell over this obsession with hair people. Britney Spears may have a lot of things wrong with her (like that god-awful music she makes), but shaving her head is not one of them. It's stupid to make a big deal out of it, as well as sexist. Nobody makes a big deal out of any guy shaving his head, why is it that when a woman does it is some sort of sign of her losing it? She is the same brainless twit as she was before the haircut, and nothing changed about her "character" as a result.

Don't get me wrong, I don't give a shit about Britney Spears. I'd be fine if she just died and I wouldn't have to hear about her anymore. But if we are going to demonize people let's do it for things that they deserve it for, like beating their kids or invading a country without provocation.

My wife and I have discussed maybe having a kid and I hope that this kind of shit would be the last thing I cared about. If my daughter wanted to get a Mohawk, I would say no problem and take her to the barber myself. I would hope that I'll be a lot more concerned with how she's doing in school and that she's not shooting heroine or becoming a Republican than with whether or not her hair and clothing choices would be the ones that I would make for myself. It's going to be her body after all. And if you can't do weird shit when you're a teenager, when can you? Damn, isn't that how you find yourself at that age?

I'd much rather she look back at pictures of herself and laugh at the goofy hair and clothes she had when she was younger than think about what an ass-hole her father was when she was growing up.