History of Hair

I have always had a love-hate-relationship with my hair. Or better yet, scratch that: I have always hated my hair. For starters, it’s blond and even as a child I realised this means I will never be the cool guy (in the movies they always have dark hair). Moreover, it’s thin and dry. Sure, if I were ever in a survival situation, it would be extremely useful for starting a fire. For the rest, its as useless as a solar powered flashlight.

I was acutely reminded of this when today I found myself at 10:02 at a hairdresser’s which opened at ten sharp… with three people before me. Still, I was in desperate need of a haircut, so there was nothing to be done, except sit and wait. And while I was waiting for my turn, I found myself going over the different hairstyles I have sported in my soon to be thirty year-long life. A history of hair, so to speak. And (I must be going crazy), for some strange reason, I have decided to share this history of hair and some thoughts about it with you…

1. The first hair-cut I can remember was something we called the mushroom-cut. It looked like… well, you can guess already. Kind of as if you had put a casserole over my head and cut off everything that stuck out from under the rim. Awkward in hindsight - especially since it once earned me second place in a Jommeke-look-alike competition, although I can’t decide whether first place would have been more or less embarassing!

2. After a while, though, my mother decided I needed a change and dragged my ass to a new trendy salon which talked her into a new look for her son: the right part with combed and gelled tuft. This meant that from then on I had to comb my hair in two parts and use gel to create a wavy tuft to the right. A nice job for a twelve year old with two left hands. Plus, became of the utmost importance that I faced the wind in the right direction or I looked like Cameron Diaz in There’s something about Mary.

3. When I went to secondary school, I soon tired of this hair-cut and started my teenage rebellion , which also had its capillary consequences. There’s nothing that says teenager louder than long hair. So I started to let my hair grow long. Understandably, this resulted in a constant row with my mum (who said it was too long) and myself (who said it was still too short). Therefore, the end result was what I call McDonalds hair. Picture the M from McDonalds, now picture it in your hair framing your face.

4. Next I started rebelling against my teenage rebellion and since I was massively into Buddhism at the time, I decided to shave my head. Not completely bald, but three to five millimeters long. Great success. Now I looked like someone with a terrible illness, and not nearly as wise as this guy:

5. When I went to university, I finally started to realize that the Germans were right when they said In der Beschränkung zeigt sich der Meister. So I was done with the extremes and started to ask for a short, but fashionable haircut. Unfortunately, most hairdressers seemed to interpret this at the time (early 2000s) as: ‘Cut everything on the sides, leave everything on top’. Together with some gel and riding a bike to classes, I must have looked disturbingly alike to Pauly from MTV’s Jersey Shore. Fabulous.

(See that painful look in his eyes? I had the same thing...)

6. This continued for quite some time until the Gods decided I still had to reach my ultimate hair-disaster. (Deep breath) Indeed. I have, in fact, for a while, in full capacity of my mental faculties, tried to imitate…David Beckham’s hair style. The one with the headband. There, I’ve said it. My God, at times like these, I’m really grateful that most of you don’t know the difference between both Freds yet. Besides being immensely awkward and taking forever (growing your hair back out from Dalai Lama-style takes time!), perhaps the strangest thing about this phase is that there are so few pictures of me with that hair. Luckily, it seems this episode in my history of hair will be lost for future generations. Phew!

And for the last few years I have tried every short hair style possible. With a parting on the left, with a parting on the right, with gel, with wax, without anything, combed, uncombed, ... You name it. Lately, when they ask me what I want in the salon, I just shrug and say with some je m'en fou 'Do what you want with it'. Sometimes something half-decent surfaces, which is then gone the next morning, only to be replaced by Cousin Itt.


Gosh. That was cathartic. Unfortunately, as I was making this history of hair, I realised that Hegel already said: 'We learn from history that we do not learn from history'. Crap. Oh well... Maybe, what I need is not a history of hair, but a revolution of hair. Maybe I should douse it with petrol and light it on fire? That seems to have worked quite well recently…