Desmond Morris - 'The Naked Woman' - Pt. 2: Hair, The Crowning Glory!

'Just a trim please...'

Strangely enough I had an example that bought home to me just how important hair can be when cross-dressing a few weeks ago. Basically I'd spent ages selecting just the right dress and accessories for a night in town. I'd packed it all, taken it up, got changed then gone to put on the make-up..... and realised I'd forgotten my wig!

Total disaster. If I'd of forgotten earrings, tights, lipstick, shoes even...well I could have coped. I would have been peeved... but I would have coped. 

But having no wig was devastating and I ended up changing back again, packing everything up and having a semi-miserable night in a semi-miserable sulk. As all cross-dressers know, it's when the wig goes on that the show really starts.  But why is this? And how has hair become such a potent visual signal? Desmond Morris takes a closer look at the subject of women and their hair in chapter two of 'The Naked Woman', specifically from the point of view of a zoologist.

If women let their hair grow as nature intended it would either be down to their knees or frame their face with a huge woolly bush which, Morris suggests, would have provided a remarkable sight when our prehistoric ancestors were on the move. [edit: Since I published this the 'Dangerous Minds' website has published an article of Victorian women who never cut their hair.  Imagine this lot naked and trekking across the plains of the Serengeti!  Long Victorian hair ] Primates do have a variety of ways of using their hair with a range of colours, tufts and crests  but the human females ability to grow an almost cape-like fringe over their body seems at first more of an encumbrance than a help. Odd enough in itself but even odder is the fact that the human female is pretty much hairless every where else (apart from armpits and groin), which is another sign of neotany or the tendency to retain juvenile features. According to Morris the stunted form of female body hair is about the same as on a 26 week old chimpanzee foetus! So why should we have this long top hair on our head and downy foetal body hair almost everywhere else?

Well, the best guess seems to be that it acts as a 'species flag', with hair providing a strong visual image. This allowed our ancestors to identify their own kind from a distance and then, when closer, the hairy-faced males could also be distinguishable from smooth females. The different types of hair (allied to skin colour) then developed to allow quick identification of different habitat-specific types. Morris suggests that the spread of humanity out of Africa into different habitats triggered evolutionary adaptations but that these adaptations only started in a few specific areas - hair, numbers of sweat glands, skin pigmentation - before the consequences of our intelligence made them irrelevant. Now, as we are pretty much removed from the effects of specific environments and move about and mingle throughout the world these differences will eventually disappear.

Good, strong roots are essential for women's hair

But on to the specifics of female hair...as Morris notes, it has been everything from a woman's crowning glory to the subject of strict religious taboos, in fact  "...no other part of the female body has been subjected to such an incredible range of cultural variation." . Of course it comes in a range of shades and Morris gives the rough estimate of hairs on a human head as being 100,000. Blonde hair is finer so they pack more in at an average of 140,000. Brunettes have 108,000 and Redheads 90,000. It grows at about 13cm a year (18cm for young adults) and usually grows to just over a meter in length before finally dropping out - far longer than in any other primate, partly because we don't have a seasonal moult and just keep on growing. Morris then goes into the cultural variation in hair - how it's treated, worn or concealed, sometimes through style but more often through the requirements to work. One effect that he notes is due to the physical attraction that males find in female hair, how it both looks and feels and this dangerous expression on feminine sexuality quite often has to be tamed and removed from the male gaze. Religions often prescribe female hair, either under headscarves, veils, nun's wimples or the hats that women were required to wear in church where their menfolk had to take theirs off! In general, he notes, women with shaved heads have never really appealed to the majority of men, as witnessed by the shaving off of hair of French women who slept with the occupying forces in the Second World War.

One other thing that Morris points out is the fact that the vast majority of hair dyes purchased  tend to look at lightening the hair, emulating the blonde look and creating a situation where there are more artificial blondes in the world than there are real ones. Why is this? 

One fact comes down to the fineness of the hair itself. Blond hair is softer, smoother and more sensual than other coarser hairs, especially on the body, armpits and pubic area so it could be that this is an attractive trait that dying seeks to emulate. Of course it doesn't actually make the hair finer, but the association in the eye of the male is there...

Secondly, and we are back to the neotany thing again, being blond is a far more juvenile characteristic than having dark hair and it sends out unconscious 'take care of me signals' to interested males! Most children have lighter hair than their adults so the blonde female is again tapping into this rich vein of empathy with her 'baby blonde locks'.

Well, it's OK if you really like the look I suppose...

Morris points out that the numbers of women bleaching their hair has led to a strange distinction between natural and dyed blondes. Over the centuries natural blondes have been seen as almost angelic, child-like innocents whilst dyed blondes (obviously with sex on their minds) have been seen as harlots. Roman prostitutes had to wear blonde wigs as the uniform of their profession and 'bottle blondes' had a reputation for good times and fast living in Hollywood.

So that's it with hair. Everyone it seems  wants blonde hair because it's softer, finer, sexually tactile and you only get light fuzz on your body as well as making you look more child-like. Could be why gentlemen prefer blondes I supppose... 

Personally the next time I'm thinking about a new wig I think I'd love a redhead style but then that's probably just as well, all things considered.