Years later I saw some programme on tv which said actually it all depends on whether the hair shaft is elliptical or circular. Corkscrew follicles were not mentioned
I was wondering what evolutionary geneticists have to say According to Wikipedia it is all to do with UV light & vitamin D
It cannot be a single gene however, or why would ‘mixed race’ children have a mixture of textures on one head?
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A good friend of the family came to visit me & my new daughter in hospital. The babies were in cots at the end of mum’s bed – mostly, at 2pm, fast asleep. But the baby directly opposite started to cry & so was picked up. My friend turned to look, & then turned back, a look of genuine horror & concern on his face
“Hedgehog,” he hissed, “That baby is bald!!!!”
A Vincentian, he had never seen such a young fair haired English baby before
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I had been on HRT patches for about 4 years. I had just been to the hairdresser to keep my short hair in trim.
On Sunday morning my 5 year old neighbour came to the back door, early, soon after I emerged from the shower
What have you done to your hair?
- I’ve just washed it
No you haven’t, it’s all curly
Sure enough, when I looked in the mirror, it was
I asked the hairdresser what she had done. Just the usual, she said
It got curlier
I tried a different hairdresser, explained the change. After she had had a good look she said: Are you sure you haven’t done anything? Well, it must be hormones then
And proceeded to tell me various hair raising stories, mostly pregnancy related
I still beleived the corkscrew theory. I could imagine my skin twisting
I asked the doctor if I could come off HRT just for a while just to see what happened
Osteoporosis, he said
The curls got tighter. I either had to buy an Afro comb or …
I remembered the time the pharmacist had accidentally dispensed some patches which were half my usual dose (the packets were identical except for the number 25 or 50). So back to the surgery. I want to step the dose down
My hair straightened out, quite quickly. Eventually I went back up to 50. My hair stayed straight
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Are there still white people in this country who, given the opportunity, ask to be allowed to touch a black person’s hair? And express surprise to find it soft
One of the lesser arguments for the undesirability of inter-racial adoption was that white foster or adoptive mothers in this country in the 1960s did not understand ‘black’ hair. Which is true – few had any experience & there were few black hairdressers around
Part of the problem is that the way you have to pull on the hair in order to put it in bunches or plaits (never mind corn row) seems brutal. The only time I had to put up with such ‘torture’ was when my mother put in the rags for ringlets (which I loved) for special occasions. And well worth it, I thought
But the misunderstanding works both ways. The most highly qualified hairdresser, skilled in the arts of straightening or weave, does not understand ‘white’ hair either
In particular, they do not understand the need for preliminary vigorous rubbing with a towel. I have sat for an hour under the dryer hood with my long hair wrapped round jumbo rollers. And still it was not dry
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Last week I was in the coffee shop. Could not help but overhear some of what was clearly a family conference. Mum, gran, older sister; young sister suspended from school until the purple grew out of her hair
My best friend’s brother was suspended from school when, for a bet, he shaved all the hair off his head
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It was the late 60s – the heady days of Black is Beautiful
Our office manager – a stunningly elegant woman – wore her hair short & straight & dyed a dark auburn. Some suspected a wig, that underneath she had what was called ‘hard’ hair, so tightly curled that it provides only sparse cover
A traitor to the cause, in other words
It started with what was probably meant to be mild teasing from two of the young firebrands in the office. The rest of us joined in the defence: True freedom is when anyone can wear their hair any way they please
Somehow it went from what counted as ‘natural’ (and therefore allowable) hair styles to whether women should wear tights And ended up nearly out of control on the subject of whether men should be allowed to wear socks
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And so it goes on. Since time began, & probably until it ends
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The physical significance of the curl of a vector field is the amount of "rotation" or angular momentum of the contents of given region of space. It arises in fluid mechanics and elasticity theory.
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