Post Seventeen: Hair Schmare. The Shit Blows.

In the last six months I've become increasingly unconcerned with my outward appearance. You can probably tell this by the fact that I've above posted a particularly feral photo of myself with no makeup and crazy unbrushed, unwashed hair that I just took of myself about a minute ago....the black hair is indeed me in this very hour.

It may seem that I'm all hooked up on how I look because I have had a gazillion hair colour changes, but I've had people asking me why I change it so much as if I am going through some sort of existential crisis. Their very interest in something I deem so completely unsignificant spurs me on. In fact, they just tutt-tutt at me now, shaking their heads as they mutter something about recklessness and complete ruin. I follow with saying that I'll shave it off if I want and many gasp. Seriously, it's hair. Just outgrowths of keratin containing junk that grows from many many many follicles in the dermis and we have heaps and heaps and heaps of the stuff all over our bodies.

This interest got me wondering why people are so attached to the hair on their heads. Perhaps its indicative of health, and maybe it's so hard wired in our systems that no hair = sick, and that is why people flip out if you chop it all off. It's probably heavily schematically linked with feminity too, and people might assume that I am a hard core dyke if I decide that a 'Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta' hair-do is a look I might want to try out.

This isn't really why I started this post though. I went to work this week with hair freshly dyed black, and the strange thing is that after all the hysteria over the last six months of changes no one mentioned ANYTHING. De nada. Niente. (I have no idea if these foreign words actually do mean nothing....)

Not one "oh, you look different for some reason" or "Sarah, the black is better/worse/any different to the gingerness on your head you had yesterday."

I work with a lot of people. A large percentage can't talk because they're dead, but they didn't know me before meeting them that day anyway so they don't count. But maybe, say, over 10 people didn't even look twice. I'm not a sensitive lady so I really don't care, but I do find it a very strange social behaviour. A strange behaviour indeed. The saga continues, but the black is probably here to stay. Once you go black....

Peace.