Follicular Fortitude.

My hair and I have a great relationship. I have very little demands. In return, it behaves exactly like me. It’s chaste, conservative and a little bit crazy. Or as some would say:

“It’s boring”

“Your hair makes you look like a maid”

“It’s puffy but in good condition ah. You try colour next time lah. Very nice you know. Brown highlight highlight only”

Whatev yo.

I have never permanently curled, rebonded or coloured my hair. I’ve been told that doing so would be an outright  “DENIAL OF THE BLESSINGS THAT GOD HAS GIVEN YOU!”. That’s not a direct translation of what my mother said when I asked for permission to highlight my hair during my adolescent years, but it roughly summed it up. She told me to make a presentation, listing out the pros and cons. I never made it. She didn’t care too much but she had a good point. The Odd Portion of Our Extended Family would make the erroneous attribution between unnatural colour of hair as indicator of terrible parenting skillz. “She’s raising blasphemous ingrates! OHNOES”

I am not kidding.

I’m still an ingrate and frequently blasphemous, with or without peroxide. But I doubt that has anything to do with parenting skills.

Photo courtesy of Kevin McGrew. I like his Flickr (=

It’s a very long and tenuous relationship, one that my mother takes immense pride in. You see, I was bald. At 3, my head resembles that of an eaglet. Refusing to let nature run its course, the fluffy tufts growing out of my head were shaved off. She began a regime of rubbing aloe vera, candlenuts and shallots on my scalp. Let marinate for half an hour then sear on a hot griddle pan for 3 minutes on each side.

Et voila! I have enough hair to last me till I hit my 70s. Also it gets really quite puffy.

Now as a fully functioning half-adult, I could do anything I want with my hair. ANYTHING. Cornrows, dreadlocks, braids, extensions, perms. The worst that could happen is a mother’s frown. It’s not a very deadly frown either. In all likelihood, she’d be making fun of me. A hairstyle approval from my mother isn’t holding me back.

I guess I just don’t see the point of it. Beauty isn’t skin deep: it is about as deep as your pancreas. It sounds like a load of bovine poop. All it means is that there are days, sometimes months, when I look like a trainwreck but the only thing that could fix it would be a change in my disposition. Some things are just beyond cosmetic control. The most beautiful people I know has a radioactive glow and they spend the least amount of time fretting about their hair.

So.. where was I? Oh right: why is my hair so boring. If my follicles were interesting, you might make the error in thinking that I am also equally fascinating. If you can see past the foliage, you’ll find out soon enough that I am excruciatingly dull.

I just wrote this much about HAIR.

I’m pretty sure that has to do with parenting skills.