My dog and I have one thing in common -- on bad hair days, we both look like Chewbacca.
Hair is a topic people never tire of discussing. "Your hair looks great," "Did you get a haircut?" or as someone once said to me, "I love your new blonde hair. Too bad it doesn't go with the face under it."
From the hairless pates of medieval monks to long-haired hippies to Hip-Hop cornrows, hair has always been as much on our minds as on our heads.
Unlike the deranged wolverine who was heard to ponder, "Why am I shedding?" human hair loss can be a source of considerable anxiety, even fear.
Normal fear can propel a person to do constructive things, like running away from a psychotic Cambodian handyman or single-handedly lifting a Hummer off a barefoot wrangler from Sundance, or thinking that plenty of checks in your checkbook means plenty of money in the bank. But when it comes to hair, that's another story.
Tweens and teens toss their long hair flirtatiously and admit that practicing The Hair Toss is no mean feat, requiring three things: a target, steely determination, and a neck.
Hair is even revered. We dye it, shape it, brush it, and mourn its loss. If we have straight hair, we curl it; if it's curly, we straighten it. If it's long, we cut it; if it's short, we grow it. We get our hair styled into quill-like bristles that should only appeal to a horny porcupine, or we supplement our tendrils with false extensions in an effort to look like J-Lo. Sexy. Hairy.
On the other hand, unless you're one of Dolly Parton's wigs, hair is not desired off your head; if a few errant follicles are found in bathrooms, we get hysterical. "Arrgghhh, hair!!!" We get on our knees to scrub the tub and strain the drain for slimy, scummy pre-worn hairs.
Also not wanted is hair in your food. Grown women have been known to faint at the sight of a hair on their meatballs, calling for immediate and stealthy removal. Worse yet, a lone hair might show up in your lunch at the Jewish deli begging the question: If there's a hair on your kreplach, does that mean it's not Kosher? It's even more traumatic when a short-n-curly shows up on your tongue and you don't know how it got there.
You can have hair of the dog that bit you, a hairy experience which makes your hair stand on end, even get grabbed by the short hairs, but one thing's certain: gray hair isn't a sign of wisdom, it's a sign of age.
Bill Cosby calls gray hair "God's graffiti." In defense, as women get older, we start by dyeing gray roots. Nora Ephron noted, "...today there are parts of Manhattan and Los Angeles where there are no gray-haired women at all."
According to the biddy section at the local salon, one day we'll have to color our eyebrows, too; besides going gray, eyebrows grow bushier with age.
George Clooney's brows are on steroids and graying already, Andy Rooney's gray bushies entered the room 15 minutes before he did, though there are exceptions; we'll never know how old the Mona Lisa is because she shaved her brows totally off in the cab on her way to Da Vinci's studio.
Some actresses are unafraid to lose their locks. Signourney Weaver was beautifully bald in "Alien," Cynthia Nixon shaved her head in 2012, and so did Charlize Theron who said, "It's time to skin this cat." Despite these bald beauties, when it comes to hair, women aren't nearly as radical as men.
A few balding men wear hairpieces that look like a divot, yet there are men on motorcycles who let their long hair blow and flow behind them into a disheveled mass while simultaneously enjoying frontal wedgies from a vibrating Harley. Hot-blooded women have lost their acrylic fingernails in such men's tangles, resulting in today's trend of merely cavorting barefoot through his head.
We've come full circle, from shaved monks to shaved celebrities. Michael Chiklis, got better ratings and an Emmy when he shaved it off for "The Shield." Ving Rhames, Vin Diesel, and Samuel L. Jackson have all achieved hairless success, leading one to conclude that their movies might technically be considered skin flix.
Today I believe what Chewbacca says: If hair really mattered, John Kerry would be president.
###