Lady Godiva, Crystal Gayle, and Mary Magdalene's Conundrums

[shanmonster]

There are a few points people don't really discuss when it comes to long hair. Sure, most people realize maintaining long hair is a lot of work, but I don't think they realize just what sort of problems are encountered. I'd like to share them with you.

First of all, there's the rat's nest syndrome. This happens at the nape of the neck, where the hair grows in something like a V-shape. I suppose it's like having a mons veneris on the back of your neck. Once hair reaches a certain critical mass, a huge ball of knots and sometimes even detritus builds up in this zone. You know those hair balls fluffy cats and collies get? Well, this is the same thing. It takes a lot of time and conditioner to get that sucker out. In geisha culture, the nape of the neck is considered a spot of great beauty. Well, I'll betcha no self-respecting geisha ever had a giant hairball on the back of her head!

And speaking of fluffy cats and collies, I shed like one. Every time I vacuum the floor, I roll up enough hairballs to make a substantial wig. Every time I wash my hair, the shower wall becomes a chiaroscuro of black hair and white tile.

Then there's hair bondage. Unless you sleep with braids (and even then, too!), hair gets wrapped around your armpits, binding your head to your shoulder.Somewhere out there, there has to be a fetish for this.

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<p>There are a few points people don't really discuss when it comes to long hair. Sure, most people realize maintaining long hair is a lot of work, but I don't think they realize just what sort of problems are encountered. <lj-cut text="I'd like to share them with you.">I'd like to share them with you.</p> <img src="http://www.shanmonster.com/2004/hair.gif" align=right width=230 height=199 alt="[Geisha]" title="[Geisha]"> <p>First of all, there's the rat's nest syndrome. This happens at the nape of the neck, where the hair grows in something like a V-shape. I suppose it's like having a mons veneris on the back of your neck. Once hair reaches a certain critical mass, a huge ball of knots and sometimes even detritus builds up in this zone. You know those hair balls fluffy cats and collies get? Well, this is the same thing. It takes a lot of time and conditioner to get that sucker out. In geisha culture, <a href="http://www.theorientalcaravan.com/images/Japan2/Geisha_nape.htm">the nape of the neck</a> is considered a spot of great beauty. Well, I'll betcha no self-respecting geisha ever had a giant hairball on the back of her head!</p> <p>And speaking of fluffy cats and collies, I shed like one. Every time I vacuum the floor, I roll up enough hairballs to make a substantial wig. Every time I wash my hair, the shower wall becomes a chiaroscuro of black hair and white tile.</p> <p>Then there's hair bondage. Unless you sleep with braids (and even then, too!), hair gets wrapped around your armpits, binding your head to your shoulder.Somewhere out there, there has to be a fetish for this.</p> <img src="http://www.shanmonster.com/2004/longhair.jpg" align=right width=234 height=379 alt="[Lovely longhaired freak!] title="[Lovely longhaired freak!]"> <p>In the case of the woman pictured here, sometimes hair is too long to brush by yourself.</p> <p>Long hair is also like the Enterprise. It likes to go where no one has gone before. It likes to get caught inside seat belt mechanisms, getting intimate with belts and rollers on the over-the-shoulder models. You scalp yourself when you sit down in a car seat, because the car door invariably shuts on your hair. If you're lying on the bed, hair likes to stay put. So when you scoot back toward the head of the bed, the hair stays behind, beneath your body weight, doing its best to haul your head off. People with very long hair also sit on it, or have other people sit on it. The latter is worse when you go to get up, and the person using your tresses as a chair does not.</p> <img src="http://www.shanmonster.com/2004/hairball.jpg" align=right width=112 height=98 alt="[Hack!]" title="[Hack!]"> <p>And finally, long hair is like doctor, giving plenty of invasive exams. I occasionally breathe my hair, which results in the same furious coughing and sputtering that cats get. It gets caught in my contact lenses. I also frequently get hair wedgies, when I shed into my crack. The feeling of a hair being pulled from this sensitive area is indescribably, and invariably has me squacking like a peeved chinchilla. My friend Seansie, who used to have long hair, had the particularly uncomfortable experience of about four inches of hair somehow being jammed deep within his urethra. He still has no idea how it got there.</p></lj-cut>

Comments

[chats-noirs.livejournal.com]

Oh, lordy. My hairs are about armpit length now & frequently get caught in my pits. I think the hair wedgie consists of stragglers too lazy to make it to the shower drain. It is taking all my will power not to get disgusted & cut the whole mess off.

F00 should develop a long-hair brushing fetish, if only to free you up to pick hairs out of unlikely places.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't want him to brush my hair, at least, not until I'd removed all the tangles, first. He's too rough with the brush.

*laughing*

[kaneta.livejournal.com]

I tried to explain this to a Mary-Sue ficwriter a while back, how all that hair does not gently float on the breeze when it's loose, how if you want it long you have to spend ages caring for it and learning how to keep it out of things(my Aunt Kishma got hers caught in an electric mixer, once, and Mom says the blades got about to her scalp before she could yank the cord from the wall). Nobody believes me, though!
(Except my poor Dan. I shed everywhere--he opened up the mouse to clean it, since the cursor was moving oddly, and it was inside. A huge ball of it. Inside the mouse.)
Mine's only just about long enough to sit on. It curls, though, which can definitely cause problems...
;)

Re: *laughing*

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

I don't think it will be all that long before I'm sitting on my hair. It's down to the points of my pelvis, now, when it's wet. Just a couple more months, and it won't be the loose hairs getting caught in my arse. Hoorah!

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I sympathize on the shedding. It doesn't help that hair is like glue on a carpet; it's very hard to pull up. I once spent some time scraping up hair with my fingers before a visit to my college dorm.
I haven't had most of the other problems. I automatically keep my hair out of the way of things-- streaking it across the bed when I sleep, pulling it over my shoulder so it's out of my backpack in the same motion as putting the bag on, things like that. I have more problems with people telling me to cut it. "Oh, you have such pretty hair! Why don't you cut it?" "I never thought of that. You have pretty eyes. Here's a screwdriver." I think the worst part of that is the guilt-trips that I DARE to have hair to my hips while children with leukemia have none, how can I live with myself denying these poor children all they want.

Hair is a body part too

[badcat42077.livejournal.com]

How do you feel about people who touch without permission? I wouldn't go and touch a complete stranger's butt because it was nice.

Re: Hair is a body part too

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

I find it odd when a stranger touches my hair, but not nearly as invasive as a stranger pawing at my crotch. At a dance performance last winter, a woman tugged on one of my braids saying, "Of course, these aren't real. Then again, neither are these" while hoisting up her own tits. Then she swayed away drunkenly.

I suppose I could have felt insulted, but I was more disgusted than anything, and sorry for the embarassed preteen boy with the woman.

Re: Hair is a body part too

[longpig.livejournal.com]

I found I experienced a lot more unwanted touching when I had no hair than when I had it long... Weirdos coming up to touch your scalp and such, and tell you how 'brave' you must be to shave your head... What the fuck?! What if I had cancer or something? Jodie knows what I'm talkin' bout!

Re: Hair is a body part too

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

Yes, I can believe that!

Re: Hair is a body part too

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

No one does that to me, actually-- they just demand I chop it all off. I've heard a lot of people, especially redheads, say that they've had trouble with it, though.

[zombienought.livejournal.com]

The worst part of when I had long hair
was when I'd get in a car, shut the hair
in the door, and then the *automatic
seatbelt* would come back on its track
and scalp me. Watching it happen and
being unable to stop it was awful!

I used to shut it in drawers, or tuck
it into my waistband.

And that swallowing bit. Ugh. I've rarely
smelled something worse than throat-spitty
hair.

I kind of like the hair-crack feeling,
and when it gets wrapped around my glans.
But, you know, I'm a fetishist like that.
:-P

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

I've met a few people who like hair wedgies. I'm just not one of them. It makes me make the oddest noises.

[basksinshadows.livejournal.com]

I have relatively thin soft hair(one hairdresser refered to it as "bunny fur")and when I had long hair, I would find that no matter how tightly i tied it back, or how much hairspray I used, invariably 2 or 3 strands would come up and whip me in the eye while I was driving.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

When I put my hair in braids, I whip myself in the face really hard while at kung fu. I either have to wear a kerchief on top of my braids, or put my hair in what I call hair-sticks, instead. Still, a kerchief really makes a difference in keeping my frizzy hair out of my face.

[rachelbutoh.livejournal.com]

Yes. These are all true...I have black hair past my ass and people say this a lot..."Your hair is sooo long!" They simply are stating a fact that I already freaking know. I usually say "I am almost there."
I don't know what else to say. I plan on shaving my head on my 40th birthday (7 years)in some sort of ritualistic butoh performance. I think I will ask my mother to do it.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

That sounds like perfect timing for getting rid of your hair! I can't see ever getting rid of my own. I have an ugly skull.

[goth-hobbit.livejournal.com]

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

My hair is butt-length, just shy of sit-upon-able, and flaming dark red. I have people come up behind me and tug on the end of my braid all of the time. (I've threatened to make a couple of silver bells and attach them to a hair tie just for the purpose of giving these people something else to play with, though I know it would just encourage them.) I've had my hair wrapped around various things - including the business end of my flex-shaft buffer. (Handpiece climbed up my ponytail and smacked my chin but good.) And I always get the "your hair's so loooong!" (Yes, and your eyesight's quite acute. As is your passion for stating the blindingly obvious.)
OTOH, I've used my hair to dry my grandfather's tears before my grandmother's funeral; I can do all kinds of fun things with it (antique combs, barrettes, flowers, you name it). It's fun to play with and fun to have it played with, and very few people who run around with the nape of their neck exposed 24/7 really know how sensitive that area is to kisses and caresses. So I've coaxed it out to butt-length and intend to keep coaxing it in hopes of having it tickle the backs of my knees. I'd love to have it get as long as the gal's in the picture. *drool*

Funny thing is, I've threatened to cut it all off upon occasion, and I get hurt puppy-dog looks and "noooo"s every single time. Good thing I like the mop as much as I do.

[superdaintykate.livejournal.com]

I hear ya sister. I have the nearly-sittable length hair. I wear it in a braid, usually, when I'm working and want it out of the way -- what is so freaking undeniable about braids? Why must people touch them, grab them, smack me with the ends of them? It's like being back in grade school.

Also, why do people keep asking "how did it get so long?" I stopped cutting it five years ago. Viola.

And a pet peeve of mine -- why must makeover shows always, ALWAYS, begin by cutting off all of the victim's hair? I know they're going for the shock value, but are there really NO STYLISTS who can work with long hair?

[elanya.livejournal.com]

I have hair that I could probably sit on if so inclined. I was modelling in a fashion show, and the stylists referred to my mop as Hair hell. Made me want to bite them, the bastards.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

They complained about my hair, too, and then I had my ear burnt badly with a curling iron. Argh.

[elanya.livejournal.com]

I find that if I lift all my hair over my head so that it is piled at the top of the bed, or even hanging over the side, I never have to worry about it tangling around me when I sleep. Also, I hate hair wedgies. And I hate it when I or other people sit/lie on it, as well, but really, you get usedto pushing it out of the way of that, I think. Imagine going from no hair to long hair and having to deal with it, ass opppsed to just growing into it?

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

That just wouldn't work for me, because I roll like a log on a hill all night.

[ex-digitalis869.livejournal.com]

about four inches of hair somehow being jammed deep within his urethra.

Aaaaaargh! You've put me off my feed for weeks to come, now.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! Heh....