Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Reflections on being a longhair
Shearing time = crying time. I'm like an infant at circumcision. Or now I know what it feels like to become a eunuch. Except in this case it's voluntary amputation, and its womanhood (of the strictly and crassly superficial variety), not manhood, to which I bid adieu.
In fact, I'm saying peace to nigh two years of identity formation. How important has this longhair aberration been? And why did I pursue this path, persist, and then finally decide to give it up? These answers are not altogether clear. They're bound up with my contested and mercurial self-appraisal. Allow me to explore some thoughts in somewhat-candor.
Social influence has been instrumental on my hair habits. I am rather impressionable. Consider this sequence of events: Between January and May 2009, three long-haired men entered and exerted considerable influence on my social reality. I respected and emulated all of them in various ways. All were longhairs. After getting a haircut in February, 2009, I wouldn't trim for another 14 months. Coincidence? I think not.
I have since fallen out of contact with these gentleman. I am in Chicago. Nobody I know has long hair; some people have come out in opposition to the institution. In fact, short hair is hegemonic among men in this professionalized, rigorous academic atmosphere. This has sown doubt where secure ambivalence reigned before. Even if people like it, the bureaucracy's impersonal regulations squash atypical expression. And I fear failure. Worse, I have not done superlatively on midterm examinations and feel tenuous.
Sometimes I think that abnormality and anti-conformist expression are normatively praiseworthy. I get worked up about aesthetics, art, and all forms of cultural and personal production. Hair and fashion, in this view, are modes of public art. Even the fruits of egotism can have positive externalities.
Sometimes I eschew ostentation, superficiality, and the hubris of special-feeling. I condemn myself. Special? Like I'm superior 'cause I have a freaking weird, pac-man pufftastic frizzle fro? Oh, man! What arrogance, what overlyanalyzed hogwash. I'm an unremarkable insect.
Cutting is part of my yearning for an elusive austerity. There was a time when I thought I should enter the army (Thank you, Robert A. Heinlein, yet again, for fueling this obsession which, like so many of other social and intellectual preoccupations, never became anything other than hypothetical idealism). Inculcate in me diligence and mental power, army, society, cryptic authority. Self-help-me. I am a lemming, leaderless. A sheep without shepherd.
Baaaaaaaah, shear me!
Of course, the hair was anti-sheep. But it is no surprise that social pressure operates even among the most marginal. Social norms, fads, and fashions exert and represent power ubiquitously. Thus the bumper-stickers disclaiming "you are so alike in your nonconformity" or "nonconformity is the new conformity."
Despite the somber tone of the text, I do sincerely feel that my hair exploration has been overwhelmingly gratifying. It was a means of personal exploration and innovation. I think I know me now better for the manifold experiences it impressed on me. Cornrows cannot exist independent of long hair. Nor can the endearing acts of the strangers who found the fro inspiring enough to comment upon or poke. Most nearly everybody was positive about it. If I want to be really optimistic, I could go as far as to say that I did my part to rescue male longhairism from social denigration, just by being a model citizen in action.
But what about the stereotypes? The drug-connotation, the inherent sloppiness, the air of oddity, the look of the 'douchebag snowboarder,' skater, or young punk. I was certainly ambivalent to this kind of short-sighted idiocy most of the time, but that still left space for me to be sensitive about it some of the time.
The internal debate ranged constantly: to cut or not to cut.
Then there were the prosaic considerations: the requisite level of long-hair-care and the fact that it was always getting into my eyes, invading the screen of my camera, falling into my food, and other annoyances. These things became severe only during periods of extreme length. They also appear to exacerbate my habitual scalp scratching.
Allow me to argue something of which I am not wholly convinced: it just doesn't matter much. Hair styling is a superficial and trivial variable. Furthermore, it is not overly determinant of physical attractiveness. It makes a difference, of course, and there is some favorable person-hairstyling matchmaking, which is valuable. But even exclusively in terms of sexiness, hair is just one of a dozen important variables. And when it comes to the symbiotics analysis, what the hair 'says,' recall that I'm still floating about in academia. I could have been successful here with the hair helmet.
Nevertheless, in terms of existential and material conditions, hair has become more of a distraction than a determinant of happiness.
I need to abstract away from irrelevancies. I need an influx of confidence. I yearn for an enlightened ascetism I do not have faith I will ever achieve. At least for now, I can stop worrying about the travails and dilemmas of hair, and focus on other forms of self-improvement.
In fact, I'm saying peace to nigh two years of identity formation. How important has this longhair aberration been? And why did I pursue this path, persist, and then finally decide to give it up? These answers are not altogether clear. They're bound up with my contested and mercurial self-appraisal. Allow me to explore some thoughts in somewhat-candor.
Social influence has been instrumental on my hair habits. I am rather impressionable. Consider this sequence of events: Between January and May 2009, three long-haired men entered and exerted considerable influence on my social reality. I respected and emulated all of them in various ways. All were longhairs. After getting a haircut in February, 2009, I wouldn't trim for another 14 months. Coincidence? I think not.
I have since fallen out of contact with these gentleman. I am in Chicago. Nobody I know has long hair; some people have come out in opposition to the institution. In fact, short hair is hegemonic among men in this professionalized, rigorous academic atmosphere. This has sown doubt where secure ambivalence reigned before. Even if people like it, the bureaucracy's impersonal regulations squash atypical expression. And I fear failure. Worse, I have not done superlatively on midterm examinations and feel tenuous.
Sometimes I think that abnormality and anti-conformist expression are normatively praiseworthy. I get worked up about aesthetics, art, and all forms of cultural and personal production. Hair and fashion, in this view, are modes of public art. Even the fruits of egotism can have positive externalities.
Sometimes I eschew ostentation, superficiality, and the hubris of special-feeling. I condemn myself. Special? Like I'm superior 'cause I have a freaking weird, pac-man pufftastic frizzle fro? Oh, man! What arrogance, what overlyanalyzed hogwash. I'm an unremarkable insect.
Cutting is part of my yearning for an elusive austerity. There was a time when I thought I should enter the army (Thank you, Robert A. Heinlein, yet again, for fueling this obsession which, like so many of other social and intellectual preoccupations, never became anything other than hypothetical idealism). Inculcate in me diligence and mental power, army, society, cryptic authority. Self-help-me. I am a lemming, leaderless. A sheep without shepherd.
Baaaaaaaah, shear me!
Of course, the hair was anti-sheep. But it is no surprise that social pressure operates even among the most marginal. Social norms, fads, and fashions exert and represent power ubiquitously. Thus the bumper-stickers disclaiming "you are so alike in your nonconformity" or "nonconformity is the new conformity."
Despite the somber tone of the text, I do sincerely feel that my hair exploration has been overwhelmingly gratifying. It was a means of personal exploration and innovation. I think I know me now better for the manifold experiences it impressed on me. Cornrows cannot exist independent of long hair. Nor can the endearing acts of the strangers who found the fro inspiring enough to comment upon or poke. Most nearly everybody was positive about it. If I want to be really optimistic, I could go as far as to say that I did my part to rescue male longhairism from social denigration, just by being a model citizen in action.
But what about the stereotypes? The drug-connotation, the inherent sloppiness, the air of oddity, the look of the 'douchebag snowboarder,' skater, or young punk. I was certainly ambivalent to this kind of short-sighted idiocy most of the time, but that still left space for me to be sensitive about it some of the time.
The internal debate ranged constantly: to cut or not to cut.
Then there were the prosaic considerations: the requisite level of long-hair-care and the fact that it was always getting into my eyes, invading the screen of my camera, falling into my food, and other annoyances. These things became severe only during periods of extreme length. They also appear to exacerbate my habitual scalp scratching.
Allow me to argue something of which I am not wholly convinced: it just doesn't matter much. Hair styling is a superficial and trivial variable. Furthermore, it is not overly determinant of physical attractiveness. It makes a difference, of course, and there is some favorable person-hairstyling matchmaking, which is valuable. But even exclusively in terms of sexiness, hair is just one of a dozen important variables. And when it comes to the symbiotics analysis, what the hair 'says,' recall that I'm still floating about in academia. I could have been successful here with the hair helmet.
Nevertheless, in terms of existential and material conditions, hair has become more of a distraction than a determinant of happiness.
I need to abstract away from irrelevancies. I need an influx of confidence. I yearn for an enlightened ascetism I do not have faith I will ever achieve. At least for now, I can stop worrying about the travails and dilemmas of hair, and focus on other forms of self-improvement.
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