hair, hair, long beautiful hair

Admitedly, I have a bit of an ecentric history with my hair. At somepoint in my freshman year of High School, I got it into my head that I wanted to grow my hair out. I think I saw Jim Carrey on the Tonight Show wearing his hair moderately long over his ears and I wanted to try it. But, I just kind kept growing it out, and eventually had some decently long hair and was occassionally wearing it in a ponytail. I cut it off after doing a play that summer where it needed to be long, but then just grew it out again. Didn't cut it for well over a year, I think and had some very long locks. I usually wore it down, too, because you can get away with that while in school. This long/short cycling continued through college and I eventually just let it grow out for about three years. My hair is never quite what I wish when its long. It gets a bit of a flip in it that is tough to manage, but it generally looks very nice all the same. But, after college and getting into the workforce, I was wearing it in a ponytail every day. I wasn't crazy about it in a ponytail, its just what was needed. I should have just cut it then, but I didn't. Just stuck with it out of a lack of inertia. I occassionally had my ex-girlfriend braid it, which I loved but which was not something I could pull off on my own. So, I cut it. Its been moderately long every since. My current girlfriend did something to it recently that I loved, but didn't want to admit I loved since she seemed to want me to be humorously annoyed with her fiddling with my hair, but I should get her to show me what she did. It pulled off the over the ears look I really like as well as a neat swept over the forehead. Its a bit retro, but I'm generally a fan of retro hair-styles.

Basically, this is all to say that I am a man who cares about hair. Which is why I really don't get two hairstyles some men don. They are so universally and properly reviled, that I just don't know why some people keep up with them. I mean, I don't want to be judgemental, but some of this just looks silly. I'm very open-minded with hair, in general. Its just these two that set me off.

The first is the mullet. I don't get that. Its universal short-hand for horribly low-class. Its like you're advertising how out-of-touch you are when you have a hairstyle which is so widely seen as a joke. It just looks silly, too. I mean, either grow it long, or don't. Don't make it look like you couldn't make up your mind. I just find it a bizarre hairstyle. But, I guess some people think its cool. Not so with my second hated hair style. That's just something people where to try to lie to the world, and it REALLY doesn't work.

I'm talking, of course, about the combover. Honestly, how do men convince themselves that it looks okay to do that? Its always horribly obvious and slimey and disturbing. Its a hairstyle of deception and its doing a bad job of it. Instead of making someone not look bald, it just makes them look bald and dealing VERY badly with it. Its not covering up something you are insecure about. You want to do that, you buy a hat like Ron Howard. Instead, it just draws attention to the insecurity as well as what they are insecure about. Please, men, if you are bald, just deal with it. Comb-overs aren't fooling anyway and they make you look like an idiot. Especially the guys who have the combovers of the single strand across the top. As if the rest of the world will encounter them exactly as the carefully positioned themselves in the mirror. Just stop it, already. All men with combovers will look better without them. Really. Just look at Rudy Guilliani who implausabily stuck with his combover even after it was a national joke. He finally gives it up and it makes him look considerably more distinguished and attractive.

Sorry, I know this is a very uselessly snarky post, but if I have to see another embarassingly bad comb-over or mullet, I'm afraid I might scream.