Oprah went into her own "hair history."


Chris insists that men don't give a shit about hair, and that women put themselves through the torture of weaves and relaxers for the benefit of other women.


Solange Knowles—who recently chopped off her own hair after being fed up with upkeep—stopped by to discuss her feelings on the matter.

On the one hand: Black hair is complicated. Loaded with meaning. Writes Desmond-Harris, "When the New Yorker set out last summer to satirize Michelle as a militant, country-hating black radical, it was no coincidence that the illustrator portrayed her with an Afro." Going natural — or not — can end up classifying a black woman. Straight hair makes some people think you're more "professional"; others might think you are selling out or tying to "be white." Natural, ultra-culry hair — worn in twists — means you might be berated by Free Republic, as Malia Obama was. Desmond-Harris notes that Don Imus infamously called the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos," making a connection between hair and promiscuity (see also: Her hair is wild, unruly, she needs to "tame" that frizz, etc.) With Chris Rock's documentary set to hit theaters at the same time we have many black women in the White House (Michelle, Sasha, Malia, Desirée Rogers, etc.) it is important to examine the stereotypes, hangups and issues surrounding women and black hair, and not treat the messages and codes surrounding black hair as trivial. Desmond-Harris writes:

One might think having a black First Lady who is widely praised as sophisticated and stylish would represent a happy ending to the story of black female beauty and acceptance. Alas, our hair still simultaneously bonds and divides us."There is no hair choice you can make that is simple," says Melissa Harris Lacewell, an associate professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton. "Any choice carries tremendous personal and political valence." Even though I'm biracial and should theoretically have half a share of hair angst, I've sacrificed endless Saturdays to the salon. It is unfathomable that I might ever leave my apartment with my hair in its truly natural state, unmoderated by heat or products. I once broke down at the airport when my gel was confiscated for exceeding the 3-oz. limit. I'm neither high maintenance nor superficial: I'm a black woman.

On the other hand: Much like attention to Michelle Obama's clothes, arms and bottom, attention to her hair feels, well, disrespectful. And plain old sad. It's not like black women are newly arrived creatures from outer space — so why is the way we deal with our hair "news"? It's been over 100 years since Madame C.J. Walker and Garrett A. Morgan. Michelle's hair matters, but surely not as much as a whole lotta other stuff she's working on.

Why Michelle's Hair Matters [Time]
Earlier: Combing Through The Deeply Rooted Politics Of Black Hair Issues
Weaves, Extensions & "Creamy Crack": Chris Rock's Good Hair Trailer
Chris Rock's New Documentary Explores "Good" Hair
Solange Chops Hair, Is Called "Insane"
The Flesh-Eating Phonies Also Known As Lace-Front Wigs
Why Is Straight Hair The Epitome Of 'Style'?
Michelle Obama Spurs A "New Arms Race"

I've been cutting and trimming my own hair off and on for years, despite the fact that it's never really worked out. It's usually motivated by finances, tipsiness, interaction with some creative type with an awesome coiffure, or, most often, the influence of some book or movie involving a hairdo which, in that moment, seems imminently necessary to my future happiness and success. Because my hair's curly, I don't need to be anywhere and I don't look in the mirror much, it usually just looks medium-bad, and I can get away with scarves or ponytails for the necessary few months - although there have been a few expensive occasions when I've required professional correction.

But cutting your own hair is one thing. The responsibility of someone else's is quite a different matter, especially when your primary experience is with a grandfather whose hair resembles Andrew Jackson's at the best of times and who crazy-glued his teeth into his mouth for special occasions. For years I've resisted trimming friends' and boyfriends' hair. But in a recent fit of economical zeal that also saw the production of several inedible baguettes, it seemed like the time was nigh for me to assume the duties of household barber. My boyfriend's hair is curlyish, he's not particular, and he survived a childhood of at-home dos of varying quality, so I figured I could handle it. The first trim was a resounding success. Over the course of two hours and a kind of horrible but also compelling miniseries about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, lock by lock, I managed to achieve a trim that looked exactly like his hair pre-trim.

Emboldened by my success, I became ambitious and exhorted him to choose a hairstyle. Inspiration struck not long after. While watching, at my behest, the very bizarre minor Michael Powell film A Canterbury Tale, Slim was enraptured by the hair of one of the central characters. The hair in question was a sort of cross between a GI's crew cut (the character's a GI) and Morrissey's pompadour. I had my doubts, but I was persuaded. We set aside an evening, spread the sheet on the floor and positioned the chair in the middle of the living room. At first I was tentative, but as the hair began to take shape under my fingers, I became drunk with power. My scissors flew faster. The hair grew stranger. And then I reached for the clippers.

There is a moment when a haircut becomes irredeemable. When it goes from "maybe it's supposed to look that way" to "complete fuck-up." If that's a line in the sand, let's say I leapt that line like the best long-jumper in the world. And then I tried to fix it, and everything got worse. I looked down in horror. Bald patches alternated with clumps of Eraserhead-bounty. He looked like Neal Cassady if Kerouac had cut his hair on a bender and then his hair also got caught in a thresher and then there was gum in it and then he had to go in for a partial labotomy circa 1928. He looked horrifying.

"How's it coming?" he asked, cheerfully oblivious.

"It needs a little evening," I said. I snipped ineffectually. I patted. I got the comb. I tried to style it into several elaborate mini-combovers before he saw it. Then I could put the reckoning off no longer. He walked to the bathroom. There was a prolonged silence.

"Well," he said.

"Yes," I replied.

There was more silence.

"Let's get drinks," I said. "On me."

And then a very miraculous thing happened. "Cool haircut," said a guy on the subway. Was said guy ludicrous? Perhaps. Was he sporting knickers, suspenders, and a tee-shirt that had been slashed to the navel? Maybe. But he was just the beginning. It is, apparently, a truth universally acknowledged that if you look aggressively ridiculous and people are insecure enough, they will herald your boldness as confidence. And because we live in world as concerned with superficial relativism as it is actually judgmental, emperor's new clothes are apparently the order of the day. In any event, by evening's end, I had agreed to cut the hair of no fewer than three acquaintances. By night's end, my boyfriend had given himself a buzz cut. And the bread was as leaden and inedible as it had been a few hours before, because there was simply no pretending that that was hip.
I can fuck up a haircut the old-fashioned way, thanks, but for the rest of you, here's how the kids are, allegedly, doing it.

Per Capita Savings: Home Barbering Grows in Recession, With Hairy Results [Wall Street Journal]
Flowbee Gone Wild [Wall Street Journal]

Straightening hair has been perceived as a way to be more acceptable to certain relatives, as well as to the white establishment…

In the face of cultural pressure, the thinking goes, conformists relax their hair, and rebels have the courage not to. In some corners, relaxing one's hair is even seen as wishing to be white.

We've covered this issue many times, as has the Times, and the discussion is ongoing. Frankly, the debate does get tiring. Saint Louis writes that many people of color ask: "Why can't hair just be hair? Must an Afro peg a woman as the political heir to Angela Davis? Is a fashionista who replicates the first lady's clean-cut bob really being untrue to herself?"

But a quote from Noliwe M. Rooks, the associate director of the Center for African American Studies at Princeton, struck me as as close as we're going to get to an answer. She was asked about what it meant when the hair of Sasha and Malia Obama was sometimes pressed straight, and said: "There's a complexity to who we are now. There wasn't an easy answer to why."

Black Hair, Still Tangled in Politics [NY Times]

Earlier: Weaves, Extensions & "Creamy Crack": Chris Rock's Good Hair Trailer
Chris Rock's New Documentary Explores "Good" Hair
Solange Chops Hair, Is Called "Insane"
The Flesh-Eating Phonies Also Known As Lace-Front Wigs
Why Is Straight Hair The Epitome Of 'Style'?

If you look at Kendra's many Playboy pictorials (just Google it), you can see that she does not have pubic hair. Maybe she shaves though. Does that make her a "technical waxing virgin?"

This month, Gillette has posted a series of instructional shaving videos on YouTube, one of which being "How To Shave Your Groin," which walks men through the process of "trimming the bush to make the tree look taller."

Philips Norelco (the company responsible for the shaved kiwi ad appearing in public men's rooms) even has an entire site dedicated to male pubic hair shaving, aptly titled Malepubichairshaving.net, that addresses the issue:

Did you know that women like men who shave down there? Having silky smooth balls is a lot nicer than finding a huge bush or choking on your pubes! Today's trend is to have it clean or at least trimmed. This helps both aesthetically and hygienic wise as well.

Content includes posts like "3 Pubic Shaving Methods Men Should AVOID, and "How to Shave Your Balls." Of course there are also links to purchase various Philips Norelco products to get the task done, such as Balla Powder, which sounds like the title of a Chamillionaire song, but is actually a talc for balls.

Braun also has a web-based campaign which references the pubic area as part of male grooming standards with its "Nationality Guide," a list of stereotypical (gay porn-ish?) guys from different countries of origin, that measures their body hair length, including "average hair down there."

Gillette Video Teaches Art Of Genital Shaving [AdFreak]
Male Pubic Hair Shaving [Official Site]
Braun's Nationality Guide [Braun]

Earlier: Dudes: Cut The Crap, Cut Your Ball Hair

I have no idea what it's like to have hair that's considered difficult to manage (aside from flatness), but it was easy to empathize with the little girls on this show because, as women, most of us are subjected to the idea that we're not measuring up to certain standards of beauty, whatever they may be. And while I could understand Tyra's outrage over a mother who chemically relaxes her 3-year-old daughter's hair, TyTy's stance on the hair issue was confusing, since she's just about the weaviest person on the planet; in fact, she regularly gives white women weaves on America's Next Top Model.

According to a piece on NPR, we as a nation are lather-happy. Partially as a result of crafty marketing, we wash our hair far more than denizens of other lands, and the result has been a boon for the shampoo industry. In America, for the past few decades it's simply been considered unhygienic not to wash one's hair several times a week.

But there's a new group of people who are saying enough! Says blogger Jeanne Haegele, "There's a lot of people doing this no-shampoo movement." For Haegele and some others, the motivation is ecological: they want to cut down on their plastic consumption, and some shampoos are bad for the Earth. Haegele now makes do with baking soda, vinegar rinses and the occasional lather with a bar soap.

Meanwhile, some hair experts and dermatologists say frequent shampooing is bad for hair anyway, stripping it of sebums and causing scalp oiliness. To anyone who's visited a curly salon, this is nothing new: shampoo is anathema to the Devachan empire, who pioneered "no-poo" and "low-poo" formulas that may not do much for your plastic consumption — or your wallet — but will keep precious oils intact. The very suds that signal "clean" to us are murder on curly and African-American hair, and, when used daily, do no favors even to straight locks.

But is no-poo truly in ascendency? As long as there are popular high school girls with shiny manes to toss around, and as long as we have television commericals featuring rivers of high-gloss Pantene, I'm going to go with...not a chance.

When It Comes To Shampoo, Less Is More [NPR]
The "No-'Poo" Movement [Re-Nest via Apartment Therapy]

Blow-drying hair to a perfect, satiny sheen has always fallen into the category of "girl skills" some of us seem to have been born without, like eyeliner application, or flirting. From the age of 12, some women seem to have the knack for producing effortless sleekness on a daily basis. On those rare occasions when I've unearthed my neglected arsenal of potions and tools and tried to tame my curls before venturing out into frigid air or to an especially grown-up interview, the results have looked like a result between Bob Ross and Katherine Graham on a really bad day. How can hands that can competently sketch or knead dough become so inept and useless when asked to coordinate a round brush and a blowdryer?

It's reassuring that others are as incompetent as I - or at least so privileged that they've never needed the skill set. The Times describes the pedagogical phenomenon thusly:

There we were - eight young women who had signed up for the Blowout Lessons and Bellinis class - fumbling with round brushes, hair dryers and rollers. With instruction from professionals, including Mr. Blandi - whose clients include Faith Hill, Jennifer Garner and Jessica Alba - our options ranged from learning how to get a beachy tousled look to '50s pinup curls. The classes last "as long as it takes for you to understand," Mr. Blandi said. The Bellinis are offered as a source of both inspiration and fortification.

While being drunk has never particularly helped my hand-eye coordination, I defer to the pros here: the author/guinea pig ends up with a fairly professional-looking blowout and some of the fellow students manage to replicate complex stuff involving rollers. Which is, I guess, great for anyone who has the money and inclination. But I'd much rather see the recession result in a permanent end to the tyranny of the blowout. Why must "well-groomed" equate to "expensive?" Because after all, what these classes are aiming for is the semblance of professionalism, and not all of us want to look like we've stepped out of a salon. Beyond the larger implications of the curly-straight debate, I resent that something to asinine - and incredibly difficult - is considered part of the essential Life Skillset. It makes me feel bad, and if I'm going to feel bad, I'd rather it were about something legitimate. I'm fine with blowouts staying the purview of the pros, because that shows they're a)hard and b)not an everyday necessity. I have to go paint some lovely little clouds now, and then break Watergate. If you'll excuse me.

My Hair? I Did It Myself. My Stylist Taught Me. [NY Times]

Writes Sykes (natch) in Vogue (natcher) about Gwyneth (natchest),

For Gwyneth Paltrow, radically changing her signature look last spring was a major personal and commercial decision. She explains,"I was shooting...and Orlando Pita was blowdrying my long blonde hair, and I was like, 'I actually can't take it anymore! lease cut off my hair!' He was like, 'What?' So we called Mario Testino [who was shooting the pictures]. And I texted Aerin Lauder [creative director at Estee Lauder, where Paltrow has a contract] to say, 'Is it OK?' She said it was OK. So I cut it off. I felt like a weight was lifted." Her new hair enabled her to pull off a new style sleek minidresses, vertiginous avantgarde heels and, of course, to launch legions of imitators."I trimmed it a bit shorter after that, and Orlando said, 'Everyone's coming in and asking for this short hair.'"

The haircut, described variously as "perfect, coolly swingy length," "this new weird length," and not a haircut at all but "a hair length," should, according to one hairdresser, "appear blunt but should never be blunt, as blunt looks cheap." It shows off Sykes' "very long" neck. It sounds like shoulder-length but oh, wait: "If the hair grows too much and starts resting on the shoulders, suddenly your look goes from fashiony glam to soccer mom."

All I can ascertain is that it's perfect. "It's perfect in the sense that if you put it into a ponytail, it's still cool. It's still got an attitude." "You can wear more things: With prints and florals you look polished rather than boho, and with sexy things it looks chic as opposed to cheap. I barely even need a blowout." But oh noes! Now everyone has the mysterious, perfect haircut!

I called Lauren Santo Domingo the next morning to discuss the elated disposition this hair produces. She was still thrilled with her hair, although there was one downside."I made Valery promise he wouldn't do the same cut for everyone else," she said, and then let out a wistful long sigh:"But everyone is going to him for shorter hair. So now we all have the same hair. Again.

Don't worry, Plum: the proles have absolutely no idea what you're on about. Your perfect haircut is safe.

Vogue [Official Site]

Last April, Bret said that his hair is "combined of my [natural] hair and the finest extensions Europe has to offer. I do the show without [the bandanna] on all the time and they won't film me. They are like, 'Put your bandanna back on. It is your image.' It is my signature thing."

We did some investigating, and that shit doesn't look like extensions, but a straight-up wig — one that seems to be getting fuller, longer, and waxier as time goes by. Let's take a look at two decades worth of Bret's hair.

We know what he used to look like back in the day, when all he needed was some hairspray and a pick to get such volume.









But there has been a clear evolution in wig thickness just over the course of the three seasons of Rock of Love.
Season 1



Season 2



Season 3



It's now flowing.






This is probably the closest thing to his real hair, circa 2001.



And circa 2004.



These extensions from 2005 are very realistic.



But he quickly moved onto this look.



Which somehow turned into Fergie-with-a-goatee.



He has attempted to go sans bandanna a few times over the years, but the results are decidedly unfavorable.












This is our guess at what the true texture and thickness of his natural hair would be.

Obviously, men can do whatever the hell they want with their facial hair. I would never say that a woman shouldn't do something because men don't find it attractive. But with mustaches, you have to wonder: Why? WHY? Unless you pair your stache with a little chin action, like a goatee or beard (case in point: Orlando Bloom) it's just not attractive. Except to Maria, who says: "I LOVE mustaches. Not flimsy little peach fuzz 'staches but full Sellecks."

Maybe you love John Waters or Don King. Fair enough. But I propose that mustaches can never truly be sexy, because if they don't remind you of your dad, they'll remind you of other dudes with mustaches, and that is not a good thing. The following photos help illustrate why:

1. If he has has curly hair, you'll realize you're kissing the guy from Welcome Back Kotter. Or Gene Shalit. Not sexy.

2. If the dude is blond, you might be tricked into thinking you're hooking up with Westley from The Princess Bride. But you're not. Also, it looks like a broom. And that's not sexy.

3. This style could be called The Keith Hernandez. It is also: Not sexy.

4. Some staches make guys look more mean. America's Most Wanted: Not sexy.

5. Pat O'Brien is up for the Goulet award. But you just can't date a man with a stache like this. He will leave you a voicemail that says, "You are so fucking hot. I am so fucking into you." Not sexy.

6. End of story.

Worst of Playgirl: Trash Staches [Fey Friends]
Robert Goulet Memorial Mustached American of the Year [American Mustache Institute]