When my brother was a wee one, he was affectionately known as Bryan Brantley Bald. This moniker was appropriate, given the extreme dearth of hair atop my young brother’s head.
Brother was not unique in this respect. Few members of my family enter toddlerhood with more than a strand or two decorating their scalp. I myself was nearly devoid of hair for many of my formative years. But, alas, Victoria Noelle Bald lacks the pleasant allerterative bounce that Bryan Brantley Bald has going for it; thus brother got the clever nickname and I was just “that kid who vaguely resembles a cancer patient.”
I finally sprouted a respectable head of hair in my early elementary school years. As those who know me well can attest, since then, I have treasured my hair and have devoted substantial energy to its upkeep and display. (This is a lie.)
My brother also eventually came to possess a full head of hair. As anyone who’s ever seen him from a distance of less than 100 yards can attest, he really likes his hair. A lot. So much so that he can’t bear the possibility of losing even a strand of it. (This is a not a lie. It’s a horrifying and alarming truth.)
I have to imagine that my brother was so scarred by years and years of early baldness that he greatly fears ever again having to go sans head covering. For this reason, he opts not to cut his hair. And, to be perfectly clear, that does not mean that he obtains occasional trimmings while maintaining a longer style. It means a scissors has not been in the vicinity of his head since 2003.
I’ll allow you a moment to think about how long ago 2003 was. It might not immediately strike you as that ancient a time when you just look at the number. But if you take the time to actively recollect memories of what you were doing in 2003, you’re likely to be stunned. I, for one, am stunned when I even think back to what I was doing just one year ago.
(For the record, exactly one year ago today, I was eating a hearty supper of lentil stew over a camp stove, celebrating the fact that my team had summited Volcan Hudson, completely unaware of the fact that in just a few short days, I’d be trapped in a blizzard with nothing to eat, seriously contemplating what I thought to be my imminent demise.)
But enough of my Patagonia PTSD . . .
Point of the story – 2003 came and went a really long time ago. People who had unprotected sex in early 2003 will be sending a child to kindergarten next fall. And just as their children has grown over the past several years, so too has my brothers hair. Just how much has it grown, you ask? Well . . .
This is what my brother looked like in the summer of 2003. At this point in time, we were actively encouraging him to have more hair. The buzz cut just seemed so bleak.
My brother's hair was somewhat better insulated come winter. On that year’s family Christmas card, my father described my brother as "having a hair cut inspired by Enimem." (For the record, my father is pretty hip and with it - having great awarness of hair styles popularized by rap icons, even if not having great awareness of how to spell those icons names.)
Anyway, shortly after that Christmas card was sent out, my brother made the executive decision that the only celebrity he wanted to be likened to was Fabio. Thus he discontinued receiving hair cuts. By Christmas ’04, he really didn’t look all that different – just shaggier. The parents were generally accepting of this hair length. They informed him that they weren’t really keen on it getting any longer, but they’d loved the Beatles in their youth; they could respect a boy with a mop top.
As the mop continued to grow, my mom started to get uncomfortable. My graduation from college was impending and it was very important to mom that our family look like a respectable Ivy League family on the big day. She informed my brother that he was required to cut his hair before graduation, as we would be taking numerous family photos and his hair was not up to family photo standards.
Of course, my brother refused and this was the family photo that resulted:
It’s funny, because looking at this photo now, I think my brother looks absolutely fine – attractive, even. His hair really isn’t all that long at all. It’s weird for me to remember just how controversial his hair was as we took this photo. Like, I am not lying when I say we had heated arguments about his hair up until just moments before the flash went off.
Anyway, the next year was my brother’s senior year of high school. Obviously, this is a year replete with important photo ops. And for each op – senior pictures, senior night at lacrosse, senior prom, graduation – my mother saw fit to remind my brother that it might be in his best interest to acquire a more attractive hair style so that he might have more pleasant photos to look at when he went back to remember his senior year. Brother would have none of it, thus:
I have particularly fond memories of the night that prom picture was taken. My sister and I were extremely nervous about my brother’s hair, as he hadn’t even really bothered to comb it or anything. We tried to blow dry it before his date arrived, in hopes of rendering it slightly more stylish, but he flipped out at us and informed us that we were not to mess with his ‘do. And then – shocking everyone, the world over – this outrageously attractive girl showed up at our door and went bananas telling my brother how good he looked, how excited she was that he’d opted to put cartoon bumblebees all over his bow tie and cummerbund, and how thrilled she was to be attending prom with a stud like him. Apparently today’s young ladies go wild for the long locks. Who knew?
Anyway, time has continued to pass. My brother has entered college (where I have to assume he’s known all over campus as “that guy with the hair”) and my mom has all but given up on encouraging him to alter his appearance for the better.
My grandmother has not given up, though. By no means. You see, my grandmother doesn’t care about all that many issues, but the issues she does care about receive a lot of attention. The list of beliefs she passionately espouses can be summed up as follows:
1.) God is extremely great.
2.) My brother really needs to get a hair cut.
Whenever we engage in family gatherings, the very first words out of my grandmother’s mouth are, “Bryan, when are you going to get your hair cut?” My brother generally just tunes out comments of this nature, which then leads grandma to pester my mother about my brother’s hair. She’ll seriously encourage my mother to cut my brother’s hair off while he’s asleep and then she’ll start generating more creative ideas. (My favorite was the time she suggested friends and community members pay money for the chance to snip off some of his hair. Grandma said she’d sell the tickets.) Inevitably, no action will be taken and she’ll go home and pray that by some miraculous intervention, my brother’s hair will be rendered less Sampson-esque.
God has yet to come through for her on this count, thus my brother currently looks like this:
Actually, that’s a lie. He looked like that five months ago. I don’t have a more recent photo to provide you with, but I can assure you that the situation has not improved since then.
You’d think that, eventually, my brother’s hair would cease to shock me . . . that, because I see him so often, I’d eventually stop noticing that he has far more hair that your average male. My reaction upon seeing him would stop being, “Holy shit – that’s a lot of hair,” and would instead be, “Hello, Bryan.” But no; I’m always a little alarmed when I see my brother. He’s a lot to take in. And, from what I gather, the rest of my family feels similarly.
But why? Why is his long hair the source of such controversy and frustration? I could hazard many a guess on this matter, but, since this is “Men in Cages," I’m going to consider the issue from a feminist viewpoint.
My brother’s long hair violates gender norms. It makes people uncomfortable because men are supposed to keep their locks short. When one sees my brother, one’s pre-existing schemas for world-interpretation are thrown out of whack. People (grandmothers, in particular) don’t like it when their schemas are messed with, thus they gets angry.
But I frequently violate gender norms . . . and it doesn’t lead to all that much familial distress and debate. I mean, I have to assume that my grandmother prays that I’ll find a nice husband one day, but she rarely encourages my mother to apply mascara to my lashes in my sleep. Why would my brother’s hair be the bigger deal?
For the most part, my gender violation isn’t that striking, I guess. Like, it’s apparent, but not in-your-face. I don’t look like a man. (Though, at a party last night, Justin Douglas did make reference to me using a male-gendered pronoun . . . a-hole.) Anyway, my choice to wear men’s pants, for instance, isn’t really as attention-grabbing as my brother’s choice to have obscene amounts of hair. (Plus, I do my best to fake it and appear moderately ladylike when in the presence of my grandma, whereas my brother can’t exactly hide his huge mass of hair.)
But, it would be too simple to say that my brother’s hair causes distress just because it violates gender norms. I’m a big fan of gender-norm-violaters. Many of my best friends are of indeterminate gender and I love them for it. My brother’s hair, however? Don’t love it at all – not because it violates gender norms, but because it’s ugly.
In truth, that’s the real problem my family has with my brother’s hair. We probably wouldn’t give a shit if he opted to wear tutus all the time – so long as they were pretty tutus. But what he’s got goin’ on ain’t pretty. I mean, just look at it:
Egad. We’re don’t detest his hair because it upsets our schemas of what is appropriate for men. We detest it because it upsets our schemas of what is appropriate to be seen in public. Simple fact: people don’t like ugly stuff.
But hold on, Tori – aren’t you supposed to be a feminist? Aren’t feminists supposed to reject the importance of physical appearance? Shouldn’t you not give a shit about what your brother looks like, and instead care about what sort of person he is within?
Here’s the thing: it would be lovely if physical appearance didn’t matter. But it does. Why? Because we’re sexual beings. We want people to find us physically attractive so that they’ll procreate with us. We want to procreate with physically attractive people because they’ve got hearty genetic material. That’s how evolution works. (And that’s why I got all down in the dumps and wrote a depressing post last week. But don’t worry. Looking at all these gross pictures of my brother’s hair has made me feel quite beautiful again – comparatively speaking, at least.)
Anyway, what I think I’m trying to say is that no matter how elevated, evolved, or feminist you consider yourself to be, ugly stuff is going to make you uncomfortable because of your genetic programming. My family isn’t a bunch of awful people for hating my brother’s hair – we’re simply sexual beings. (Isn’t that a great theme with which to end Family Week? Everyone in your family is sexual! Everyone!)
I think my brother has yet to cut his hair because he’s still fairly asexual. He hasn’t quite graduated from the “video games, football, and Chipotle are all that matter” stage of male existence. Assumedly, at some point in the near future, he’ll decide that girls are up there in importance with video games, football, and Chipotle and he’ll chop off his hair as a means of wooing the chicas. And life will be great – for him, for grandma, and for humanity.
Men in Cages" runs Friday afternoons. You can read more about Tori here.
#1- I think at prom/lax/grad he's totally pulling the beast from the beauty and the beast after he turns into a man thing.
#2- I hope I didn't age that much since 2003. That really doesn't seem that long ago to me.
#3 - I got like 6 inches of hair cut off today! (Just wanted to share)
miss you tor tor!
Posted by: EmGusk | October 28, 2007 at 09:55 PM
hahaha emily, i was going to make the exact same beauty and the beast reference.
Posted by: Lauren | October 28, 2007 at 11:20 PM
me three! weird. also, I'm guessing that it was a slow week at work for Tori. Yay for us!
Posted by: the mayor | October 29, 2007 at 12:51 AM
I fear he's slowly morphing from Beast as a man to Beast as a beast, however . . .
Posted by: Tori | October 29, 2007 at 10:15 AM
Thanks for sharing !
http://www.gfwatches.com/e-sprit-watches-for-her-694.html
This is very good blog
Posted by: Cindy0002hui | May 23, 2011 at 05:09 AM