No More Hair?

Story by Rose Zheng

| WHAT IF? CONTEST

I was walking on 49th street one morning, eating my usual bagel and sipping my latte, wondering… what if we didn’t have these beautiful, glorious stringy strands confidently resting on our heads called hair?

Every day, when staring at someone’s head, it would be shiny, empty, peach colored perfection. It would be so delightfully clean and perfect, without even a single strand of hair.

We would spend much less time grooming. But where shall that time be spent? To groom our very own imaginary strands of hair, wondering what real hair looked like? 

Where would our faded blond curls and glistening strawberry blonde locks go? To the deep, dark pits of skullduggery? To the fierce fires of pure spite? Why would these sources undeservedly snatch our precious hair without even thinking? 

While pondering this, I also wondered, what is the meaning of hair anyway? Why does it just sit so comfortably on our heads, just doing nothing but making us look so called “normal”, as deemed by society? If hair had no meaning, why was it even needed to sit on our perfectly empty, shiny, perfect peach colored heads, so perfect on their own? 

Hair is like dark lines drawn on a white piece of paper, like black strings woven into a white blanket. Like drops of ebony ink in the purely white snow. So meaningful, but so meaningless at the same time. 

Hair can be beautifully curled into many springs or straightened to the very point where it would be straight as a line. Hair can be charcoal black or light brown, like the caramel sauce drizzled on your sundae. Hair can be so uniquely perfect sometimes-would we really be better off without it?

Think about the cotton plants, which farmers spend long, hot summers picking. The cotton is then woven into a fabric. The fabric is then cut and sewed into a tiny bow by the seamstress. A clear dab of the plasticy hot glue, followed by a metal clip goes on the bow. The bow is then carefully situated in between the strands of a girl’s chocolate brown curls. Without hair, what would be the meaning of these bows that are made every day?

Traditional children’s fairy tales would be different. Goldilocks would have a different name if not for her dark blond curls. Rapunzel would have no meaning without her caramel colored hair, snaking down to the bottom of her grey stone tower, so thick but in such thin elastic like strands.

Hair represents age. The old, experienced and wise man has shorter gray strands, while the young, inquisitive boy has his own fresh-looking brown strands, a perfect representation of the abstractness of pure youth.

In a world with no hair, some would only see the shiny, peach colored perfection of baldness, clean without even a single strand or mark. But looking at a deeper angle, it would be quite noticeable how empty and shallow our lives may be without the shiny but faded, naturally highlighted, glorious elastic like strands, which nest themselves on our supposedly shiny, peach colored, perfectly round heads.