I happened to watch the series “Self Made” as I was browsing. I got hooked. It is a series based on the amazing life of Madam C.J. Walker. She was an African American entrepreneur, in the 1800’s, a philanthropist, and political and social activist. She is recorded as the first female self-made millionaire in America in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Walker’s story is inspiring, from a humble beginnings as a washerwoman who lost her hair to stress, and then making a U turn and making her fortune by developing and marketing a line of hair care products and having a dream of uplifting everyone through being industrious.
She literally embodies going from a Bad hair Day to Crowning Glory.
This took me to Hair. A really hairy topic for me. And really how much of importance, and wellbeing emotional, psychological, social is attached to Hair.
I have had a love hate relationship with my hair. I can track my own growth and life changes marked by how my hair has been. It has been kind of a signpost. From length, colour, styles, texture.
Growing up, I had short hair, unconsciously styled after Jo my name sake from Little Women. Like her I turned out to be a ‘Tomboy’ with short hair. It worked for my lifestyle. For years I shied away from fully owning my identify .
I have often dealt with ‘setbacks” in my life with a haircut. But never really thought about all this before.
My friend Savvy, has beautiful thick hair, and I remember just 5 years ago, when my hair was short and wimpy, “urchin look”, she would say. I wanted hair like hers. When I started to pay attention to myself my hair changed. Now I do have hair like hers.
What was so important about hair. Why this big deal. Across gender, culture, ages – Hair has been a statement. And It conveys so much. As I started to research I came across many amazing things.
We have so many hair metaphors – bad hair day, let your hair down, get out of my hair, hair raising experience, big hairy audacious etc. Throughout history, hair has played a significant role in shaping and being shaped by our society – it is associated with youthfulness and beauty in women and virility and masculinity in men – at a superficial level, but there is more.
It has been used to convey many things to the world.
Tradition
In India, new born children’s, hair is shaved and the hair is often offered in a holy place. It is believed that children carry memories from the previous birth. And shaving the head, helped let go of the “memories”. This made sense, since, even after someone dies, in Hindu tradition, the son has to shave his head – old life in a way is over. a passage into a new life. I felt like that after every haircut.
History and Myth
Here are some interesting facts about hair throughout history. Christian priests and monks once shaved the crowns of their head to symbolise a lack of vanity and their vow of chastity.
In the famous biblical story, Samson had his strength in his hair, that was his secret. When Delilah betrayed him and cut his hair, his strength was gone. I remember feeling really furious and sad every time I heard this story
Science
We have hair, almost everywhere on the body. Nature does not do anything without a reason. Hair cells are specialized receptor cells that transduce mechanical force (e.g., from sound waves, gravity, or vibrations) into an electrical signal. It is the most potent, purest form of protein(keratin)in the world. This oil bulb at the root is hair oil is enough to support your brain through any activity. Hair is the antennas for that area of the body. Each cell in the body goes through certain changes, and hair is the informant .Tiny blood vessels at the base of every follicle feed the hair root to keep it growing. But once the hair is at the skin’s surface, the cells within the strand of hair aren’t alive anymore. The hair you see on every part of your body contains dead cells.
Some of the yogis also believe it is the antennas that act as conduits to bring you greater quantities of subtle, cosmic energy. Most “yogis” and spiritual seekers keep their hair long or wear it tied ‘up’ in a “Rishi Knot”, bun to activate the Solar center, which is in the exact spot.
Pinneal Gland
My Nana, (mom’s mom) had a peculiar hair ritual of her own. Every morning she would wake up and even before she opened her eyes fully, she would reach under her pillow and take out her favourite wooden comb and brush her hair a 100 times, I am not kidding I have counted. She would comb it into a neat bun, cover it with a fishnet like thing and then get up. It would take about 30 minutes. She would often scold me for my disheveled hair, and for the fact that they would be often covering my forehead and eyes.
Today as I read the following, I understood the significance for the first time. Sorry Nana
The bones in the forehead are porous and have a special reason for that. Their function is to transmit light to the pineal gland, which affects brain activity, as well as thyroid and sexual hormones. The pineal gland was described as the “Seat of the Soul” by Renee Descartes and it is located in the center of the brain.Also know as the Third Eye. Cutting bangs, or keeping your forehead covered, impedes this process.
It also made me wonder, in some cultures where women cover their face and forehead, what does it do to their pineal gland?
There is a story of Gengis khan, the Mongol emperor in the 11th century, making it compulsory for Chinese men and women to have ’bangs’ (hair on the forehead) So that they would not ‘wakeup’ and he could control them. He ofcourse had long hair. It kind of adds up.
Feminity
A woman’s hair remains a symbol of femininity her Identity. It’s no wonder women feel ‘strongly, about it’s presence or absence.
Someone I was coaching a few years ago, was detected with Cancer. She is a strong woman someone who survived a divorce, raising 3 children, demise of her parents, moving countries etc. But one day in the session she just broke down. Through her heart wrenching sobs she told me, she had started to lose hair. Something she knew would happen, and yet when it did – It broke her. Her “identity” was literally draining down the pipe.
I also know of some dear friends, women, who regularly voluntarily go bald. When I asked them, one of them said it made them feel freer of the pressure of Being feminine in a particular definition and some men friends and my brother, who went bald, not voluntarily. And happily make jokes about it. It is also a way to avoid some difficult emotions.
It is interesting how hair affects both genders differently in some way.
Freedom and Beauty.
The legend of Lady Godiva, the nude ride is first recorded in the 13th century, in the Flores Historiarum . According to the story, Lady Godiva took pity on the people of Coventry, who were suffering grievously under her husband’s tyranny. And as a way to rid them of that, took on her husbands challenge to strip naked and ride on a horse through the streets of the town. Lady Godiva after issuing a proclamation that all persons should stay indoors and shut their windows, she rode through the town, clothed only in her long hair.
The image of Lady Godiva riding a horse with her body covered with only her long hair has become a symbol of civic freedom and beauty. The phrase “Crowning Glory” comes from this.
Devotion and Love
We have our own, symbol of devotion and love. Andal was a Tamil poet and Bhakti saint also know as Akka Mahadevi. As a young woman, she fell in love with Lord Vishnu and refused to wed any mortal man. In her evocative poetry and songs, as a teenager, she asks for His embrace, demands His caress. When scantily clad women of the 21st century are frowned upon, Andal dared to go around naked, lost in her devotion in the 12th century. Legend has it though, that her nudity was totally protected by her beautiful, long hair. Her statue too, installed in her birthplace, stands thus today.
These stories of Hair and its association with Courage, devotion ,Freedom are fascinating. I am having a ‘hair raising experience’ Just could resist that one
Intuition
Hair “picks us” signal.
It seems that during the Vietnam War special forces in the war department had sent undercover experts to comb American Indian Reservations looking for talented scouts. They were especially looking for men with outstanding, almost supernatural, tracking abilities. Before being approached, these carefully selected men were extensively documented as experts in tracking and survival. Once enlisted, an amazing thing happened.
Whatever talents and skills they had possessed on the reservation seemed to mysteriously disappear, as recruit after recruit failed to perform as expected in the field. There were serious causalities and failures of performance led the government to contract expensive testing of these recruits, and this is what was found.
When questioned about their failure to perform as expected, the older recruits replied consistently that when they received their required military haircuts, they could no longer ‘sense’ the enemy, they could no longer access a ‘sixth sense’, their ‘intuition’ no longer was reliable, they couldn’t ‘read’ subtle signs as well or access subtle extrasensory information.
Commerce
Fortune Business Insights says that the global market was USD 75.06 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach USD 112.97 billion by 2028. Two business that will survive and thrive no matter what, COVID not withstanding is Food and Hair. Interesting
“Tonsure”, in various religions, a ceremony of initiation in which hair is clipped from the head as part of the ritual a new stage of religious development or activity.
Sri Venkateswara Temple in Tirupati is one of the biggest suppliers of hair. Every year, lakhs of pilgrims flock to the tonsure halls of the temple to propitiate Lord Balaji with a gift of their hair. It is later collected and auctioned off—around 10 per cent of the temple’s annual approximate income of over 2000 crore comes from this hair. According to this report in The Economic Times, nearly 35,000 heads are shaven daily on an average by the 1,500-odd barbers employed by the temple management.
It made me think of the interconnections. In one end of the world somebody offers prayers and their hair in faith, somewhere else, this same hair becomes the answer to somebody else’s prayers and faith.
Phew !!!!
With all this about hair, it is one of the things that we can see as growing, and changing and perhaps that is why we invest in its wellbeing and growth mindfully. Because it is a kind of radar of our internal more complex feelings.
Recently a friend who came home, suddenly out of the blue asked, how do you like my hair. He was experimenting with long hair a short while ago but now is back to short. I was pleasantly surprised that hair was not a gender conversation only.
For years I have never really understood why are people open up to their hair stylist about their ‘issues’. Even in the yesteryears comic strip Tantri Mantri, the king confided everything to his Barber. Now I think I understand a little. The minute somebody touches your hair, a connection is made. And one opens up.
Perhaps this booming hair industry is pointing in the direction of the need to share and be heard. Maybe the issue of Self esteem, and the embracing of Masculine and Feminine energies is being demonstrated more in the changing hair story.
Maybe we need to stop to look at our relationship with our hair and how it’s a reflection of our relationship with our own deeper authentic self. Our relationship with concepts of Beauty and aliveness. What do we want to be seen and not seen as.
Studies show , often men associate curly hair as “Wild and untamed”, and straight as “plain a docile” They can be very wrong, I can assure. And lot has to do with the stories we have grown up on.
Recently my friend finally went for a haircut, and instantly she went from feeling dry and listless like her hair, that had gotten damaged because of “heat treatments”, literally and metaphorically, to healthy, bouncy and more confident. It was like Magic.
It fascinates me that something so Dead make us so Alive.
For me, I feel a lot of ‘weight’ off after a good hair wash and a lot clearer when I untangle them.
Perhaps we should tell not just Fairy tales to our children but also some hairy tales. And stories about self esteem, courage and real beauty. It’s time to Unlock the “Locks” – Maybe we need to open these locks let our hair down more often.
After-all, Rapunzel finally escapes the tower where she has been imprisoned, using her hair after she lets it down. And let her love climb up.