Over the Top

Waiting in a room with a slew of magazines affords you the luxury of browsing through topics, one might otherwise overlook, like how the most luxurious looking hair belongs to the Asian community (around Hongkong and China). The article went on to state that the Asian obsession with luxurious hair might be attributed to the average Asian hair strand being 5 times thicker than the average Western strand.

http://www.aralifestyle.com/article.aspx?UserFeedGuid=cda9e966-c488-4a23-91fa-52aff308fb6b&ArticleId=2254&ComboId=5471&title=The-Asian-secret-to-strong-lush-hair&origin=222838-APP12

This simple statement caused my mind to go into full drive. Have they not seen the Indian obsession with the tresses? In fact, the theory most rampant in South India is: the shinier the plate, the thicker the hair. Entire coastlines of coconuts are crushed by the millions, just so men can look bald and shiny while women can squirm with the oil tightly braided into plaits that are supposed to ensure the quintessential South Indian beauty look.

Let me be very clear that I hate the shiny hair-oil look – it haunted my childhood more effective than a bunch of spectres escaped from the local cemetery. My mother is/was a strong proponent of the oiled hair syndrome. In fact, had you interviewed me then, I would even go on to say she had a theory that unoiled hair induces moral turpitude in teenage girls, and thereby did the best she could to make sure that all good looks are wiped out with the sleeziest oil look. This, in a school, where none of my friends applied oil to go out in Public. Horrendous I tell you – horrendous.

At one point, our school (a residential one) decided that those in the Inter School Athletics team needed more nutrition to take up the physical challenges posed by a rigorous sporting career, and decided to give all the athletes an extra egg in the morning. While the boys seemed to gobble the eggs up with little effort, for the girls, it was a different matter. What should have meant more strength failed to manifest itself. What did happen, was that the girls on the team ran with a bigger bounce in their hair, flouncing up and down like those advertisements on television. Quite the Sunsilk princesses we were. Our coaches found to their horror a theory that eggs acted as a wonderful hair conditioner and had to undertake drastic measures such as boiling the eggs, so they could not be used for over-the-top purposes.

That was how much good looking hair meant…..