Just A Little Off The Top
I had a 1950 Arkansas-styled brushcut/flattop/buzzcut until I was about 10 or 11 years old under direct orders of my father.
As a young kid I recall the ritual of styling the flat top before going to church. My mother would use a canister-styled, screw-the-product-up-from-the-bottom container of hair paste wax which looked pretty much like underarm-deodorant applicator sticks look today. I can still feel that sticky wax (and smell it too) as Mother Mary (her name, really) stamped the hair stick against my forehead with a faint "schhstuppp" noise a couple inches below my hairline and then slide it upward so the front, leading edge of my hair was glued skyward, (and the top third of my forehead shined slick).
I remember arguments (fights really) in our house when I was a kid. These particular spats were over hair. The utterance, "It's my house and you'll get your hair cut or live somewhere else" was not uncommon. One of my brothers chose to grow his hair the length he wanted, quit school and left home. Irony was he became a police cadet not long afterward and had to have his hair pretty much shaved off. The mutton chop sideburns went too.
My single point of vanity is my hair, really. I remember the turning point when my mop went from it being hair to being HAIR. I once always prided myself on not paying more than a few dollars for a cut. I could get a cut and style for less than $5 at The Bay in downtown Calgary in the mid-'80s. A nice woman, a Vietnamese boat person who burdened me with tales of incredible hardship in her journey to Canada, was my hairdresser. She never ran out of anecdotes of the hell she and her family had to endure. And I never ran out of questions to ask her.
Tired of these "bowl cuts," a girlfriend (yes,you read the gender correctly) paid the big bucks (more than I pay even now, nearly 20 years later, for a cut) every month on my behalf and a very gay gentleman named Anthony inappropriately leaned his crotch into my shoulder and gave me hair style. GQ style according to the woman forking over the cash for the cuts. I have never looked back -- regarding haircuts I mean. It was some years later before I never looked back on guys leaning their crotches into me.
But hair as politics? Hasn't dawned on me in two and a half decades, except when raised in my mind by the occasional "Hair, The Musical" revival.
Seems, however, the Koreans care.
Having a shaved head in S. Korea is a big no-no. It's reserved only for monks, and it seems, for those who wish to be viewed as freaks. My "he who is there and not here with me" shaved his head (#1 clipper-blade-guard length) once a week while living in Canada. One of the first things said to him when back on Korean soil was about the need for his hair to be longer. "Fast and here's a hat." Since home he has started a part-time job as a waiter -- his hair only about a month from last shaving -- and his manager immediately pointed out his hair must be longer. I guess length does indeed matter.
Compare that with our Korean friends in the North. There long is wrong. In NK a recent official campaign by the government (jeebus, what a misnomer for that zany freak-lead system)entitled, "Let us trim our hair in accordance with Socialist lifestyle" implores men to cut their hair. Preferred length? One to five cm. Ahem, the crewcut was among the styles given the happy nod. What I can't figure out is: have you seen the hair on the his wackiness, the exalted leader. He's poster boy for Idiot Despot magazine AND the campaign to fry one's hair with home perms -- although rumour has it even Kim has trimmed his '70s Afro in accordance with the latest "let's try to get the good NK people thinking about anything but the fact we shipped their rice to Japan and left them with burlap soup to eat" campaign.
Government strategy: "Today a haircut. Tomorrow we more credibly threaten the free world with tales of our new (well-manicured and coiffured) nuke-loaded ICMBs."
North Korean men are expected to get a cut every 15 days. It helps them reflect their ideological purity. And when you're being starved to death by your own government it's important to look your best, really.
"So I tucked my hair up under my hat and went in to ask them why..."
As a young kid I recall the ritual of styling the flat top before going to church. My mother would use a canister-styled, screw-the-product-up-from-the-bottom container of hair paste wax which looked pretty much like underarm-deodorant applicator sticks look today. I can still feel that sticky wax (and smell it too) as Mother Mary (her name, really) stamped the hair stick against my forehead with a faint "schhstuppp" noise a couple inches below my hairline and then slide it upward so the front, leading edge of my hair was glued skyward, (and the top third of my forehead shined slick).
I remember arguments (fights really) in our house when I was a kid. These particular spats were over hair. The utterance, "It's my house and you'll get your hair cut or live somewhere else" was not uncommon. One of my brothers chose to grow his hair the length he wanted, quit school and left home. Irony was he became a police cadet not long afterward and had to have his hair pretty much shaved off. The mutton chop sideburns went too.
My single point of vanity is my hair, really. I remember the turning point when my mop went from it being hair to being HAIR. I once always prided myself on not paying more than a few dollars for a cut. I could get a cut and style for less than $5 at The Bay in downtown Calgary in the mid-'80s. A nice woman, a Vietnamese boat person who burdened me with tales of incredible hardship in her journey to Canada, was my hairdresser. She never ran out of anecdotes of the hell she and her family had to endure. And I never ran out of questions to ask her.
Tired of these "bowl cuts," a girlfriend (yes,you read the gender correctly) paid the big bucks (more than I pay even now, nearly 20 years later, for a cut) every month on my behalf and a very gay gentleman named Anthony inappropriately leaned his crotch into my shoulder and gave me hair style. GQ style according to the woman forking over the cash for the cuts. I have never looked back -- regarding haircuts I mean. It was some years later before I never looked back on guys leaning their crotches into me.
But hair as politics? Hasn't dawned on me in two and a half decades, except when raised in my mind by the occasional "Hair, The Musical" revival.
Seems, however, the Koreans care.
Having a shaved head in S. Korea is a big no-no. It's reserved only for monks, and it seems, for those who wish to be viewed as freaks. My "he who is there and not here with me" shaved his head (#1 clipper-blade-guard length) once a week while living in Canada. One of the first things said to him when back on Korean soil was about the need for his hair to be longer. "Fast and here's a hat." Since home he has started a part-time job as a waiter -- his hair only about a month from last shaving -- and his manager immediately pointed out his hair must be longer. I guess length does indeed matter.
Compare that with our Korean friends in the North. There long is wrong. In NK a recent official campaign by the government (jeebus, what a misnomer for that zany freak-lead system)entitled, "Let us trim our hair in accordance with Socialist lifestyle" implores men to cut their hair. Preferred length? One to five cm. Ahem, the crewcut was among the styles given the happy nod. What I can't figure out is: have you seen the hair on the his wackiness, the exalted leader. He's poster boy for Idiot Despot magazine AND the campaign to fry one's hair with home perms -- although rumour has it even Kim has trimmed his '70s Afro in accordance with the latest "let's try to get the good NK people thinking about anything but the fact we shipped their rice to Japan and left them with burlap soup to eat" campaign.
Government strategy: "Today a haircut. Tomorrow we more credibly threaten the free world with tales of our new (well-manicured and coiffured) nuke-loaded ICMBs."
North Korean men are expected to get a cut every 15 days. It helps them reflect their ideological purity. And when you're being starved to death by your own government it's important to look your best, really.
"So I tucked my hair up under my hat and went in to ask them why..."
posted by Heipel at
5:37 PM
2 Comments:
yes..i have a little trouble with my hair here...but i think..their thought(S.koreans) were changed a bit..than before..ha^^..but anyway it's hard to live here with 0.5mm hair..still...ha~!...damn prejudice..
Too bad those well trimmed bastards aren't sitting on a lot of oil. That'd get Georgy-boy off his ass.
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