martyn23

Whilst working my dead end job this Saturday I was introduced to a totally unique breed of woman. I like to feel that I get along with a wide variety of personalities, but I can say with great confidence that every woman that I know is infinitely enwrapped in a constant battle with a changing hair style.

My Mother is a perfect example. Not so long ago her hair resembled a golf green. It was flat, short and if you suffered from hay fever it made you sneeze. I had come to the conclusion it was a generation thing or the simple fact she didn’t feel the need to paint her hair and allow the perfectly lined borders to become overgrown.

However, the times have changed, the age of 40 has been reached and now we are purchasing bamboo shampoos costing in excess of £45. This seems a lot to me when my cheap shampoo does exactly the same task of removing life’s little muck monsters from my hair as my mums Gucci equivalent.

Furthermore, it seems that women like to paint their hair too. The other day a lady with Barbie pink hair came walking by hand in hand with her lover who too had hair of a luminous nature. My mum’s not into resplendent colouring, but she too has joined the barmy army of peroxide painters. I must confess that now her hair is longer and coloured in, it does look better than it ever has but that’s not the point.

My girlfriend is the same too. She wants to have her hair cut but she doesn’t know how to have it done. To find answers to these questions of style, she asks me, the guy that once bought a jacket with holes in it. She says how she pines for a new style yet she doesn’t like any of the new styles and her style suits her and like she likes her hair but like sometimes she wants a change. She likes Jennifer Aniston’s hair and hers is a bit like that when she has it cut but because it’s not been cut for ages it’s like lost its shape and like looks different.

At this point the male brain switched off five minutes ago and stared thinking about carpets or any other non hair related topic. However, if you have the daggers of dialect coming through your phone receiver as I do most nights, you too will have had to come up with some tips for your girlfriend or wife. The best thing to do is to hang up and then say the battery fell out of the phone as this seems to be the best way to sway conversation away from the world of grooming.

Today at lunch I went into Super Drug to help inspire my girlfriend in the way of mother’s day gifts. After dismissing sunglasses, glue, a selection of Spanish nuts and leg warmers I thought it best to shut my mouth and let her take her own inspiration.

Eventually she came to the conclusion that shampoos would be perfect. Not only were they original but they were just what her mum was looking for. So here we are again. Yet another woman in need of some wild flower extracts. I just don’t understand.

As a man, I wash my hair everyday. I have it cut just short enough to keep the lice and hair parasites at bay and just long enough so it doesn’t make me look like a convicted serial killer. Occasionally I use conditioner but it seems to make as good as no difference so I simply don’t use it that much. If a girl was to do what I do, her world would fall down to her shower soaked feet in a slow falling waterfall of Gucci foam.

From the hours spent talking about hair to my girlfriend it seems that for a girl washing your hair is a science in itself. My mother is the same. You have to plan the day’s you do it it takes that long. She tells me how she has to shampoo it and then rinse it thoroughly. Conditioner is applied next and then a few minutes pass before it is once again rinsed thoroughly. Next is the drying process. This differs from woman to woman but usually a hair dryer (that thing that looks like a gun and blows up if you pretend it’s a car by spending 5 minutes revving it up) and some hair straightness(because hair is definitely triangular) are the tools of the trade.

This process can take up to 30 minutes to execute, 30 minutes I simply don’t have in my life. That’s one hour a week, 4 hours a month and 48 hours a year. That’s two days faffing around when faffing isn’t necessary.

However, going back to the lady that came into my workplace today. Her hair didn’t shine with a silky smoothness or scream out “stroke me”. It was horribly greasy, so much so you could cook a breakfast in it. Floating on this Panama Canal of frying fat were huge chunks of dandruff capable of sinking the Titanic for a second time.

This made me think a bit. As men we like to moan and groan about or girlfriends, wives, sisters, mothers and any other female relation you may be close to about their obsession with their lion manes. We grunt when they spend £50 on shampoo made from drain water and give a disapproving sigh at the hint of the straighteners warming up, but without these image invoked annoyances we’d all find the female race as attractive as a bed made of carpet vipers. I don’t know about you, but if it was a toss up between spending time with the hissing of vipers or the humming of straighteners, the straighteners would win hands down every time.

zoya_brar

haha-- another funny piece! you have this way of making boring mundane everyday life sound so hilarious!
i love reading your stuff!

Sparx

What a brillaint read. Written with style and wit. LOL, i agree with you as well. Imagine a world with women who didn't do their hair. lol, great short story. Looking forward to more.

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"KNIVES AND RHYMES"

writenow30

What a humorous piece. I love the word choices. Faffing. Heh!

aliceedelweiss

I absolutly love your humor

And I happen to be one of those hair-obsessed girls. Or are we all? other than the girl you saw at work of course.

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martyn23

Thanks for all your comments. I'm glad you enjoyed reading it.