Raison D’être pour Cheveux

Today, I want to talk about something very important.  Hair.

We have a serious love/hate relationship with hair even though it is just some dead skin cells that grow all over our bodies.  The unwanted hair are shaved off or depilated  and the rest are lavished with various creams, soaps, and chemicals.  We cry when there is too much of it, and we cry when there is not enough.  We spend billions of dollars on our hair, even going so far as to implant them in places where they have gone bald, or weaving them into areas where there is not enough hair.  We rip them out in painful waxy patches from areas where they meander unwanted and we rub creams onto areas where we want more hair to grow, hoping and praying that they will.    It is not necessary for survival in any sense, so why is it so important in this society?

The answer is sex.  It is one of our main sexual turn-on signals that we humans have used to great advantage from antiquity.  The longer more luscious the hair, the better the chance that one’s genetic material will get transferred down to the next generation.  It is an indication of youth, health, and vitality, all wonderful traits which promise a good return on the investment of child bearing.  But sex is not the ultimate reason why hair is so important.  The raison d’être for  is procreation.

In ancient times, it was the male who had to do all the preening, much like what males in many animal species do today.  He had to show his strength, vitality, and good looks in hopes that the female will choose him over other males to be the father of her baby.  Since child bearing is the sole responsibility of the female, she had the power to choose the genetic father who will be the yang seed to fertilize her egg.  The child being born was held in high regards because the family recognized how important the child was to the future survival of the clan.  The mother was honored and motherhood was a sacred duty.  She was given support and help with the raising and caring of the children she bore.  It was not a burden to be dumped onto a group of humans who simply had the misfortune to have been born female.  It was an honor, and as such, she was treated with honor.

Nowadays, with the paternalistic way of viewing society and family structures, the burden of childbearing AND vying for male attention has been placed on women, with little regard to the support needed to raise a child, and even less regard for the honor of motherhood. This is probably why, as societies get more advanced and women are given more choices, and to be empowered, we tend to say, ‘Screw this!” and we choose nobody.  This then leaves whole societies that grow older and older, with less and less younger people to take their place.

This is not an accident.  Give women choice + honor and we go for the honor.  Give us choice with no honor and we have no choice but to go for choice.  That is so clear, and yet so many people do not understand this.

I have no doubt that, given another century, this will be painfully obvious.  Once it becomes obvious, men will once again be the preeners and women will be given their choice of mates, yet again.  The scales will be balanced and we will see a more egalitarian society, not just economically but also socially.  This will be great because we will have more long-haired men to look at!