Hair forms part of romantic and sexual attraction. Mermaids and sirens of the sea and the maiden Lorelei of the river Rhine are said to have brought men to disaster who became fixated on the beauty of their long tresses. Australian aborigines saved their wives hair clippings as a prized possession. Even today, some orthodox Jewish women only allow their husbands to see their hair.

What do we desire in hair? Humans generally are attracted to head hair that is relatively dense, thick-stranded, and somewhat long. Hair that is strongly pigmented (from blond to black) but not gray is generally preferred. The ideal of hair most closely approximates the physical characteristics of the hair on young child. Many conditioners add fats to thicken the hair shaft so it looks like younger hair.

Hair is a specialized form of skin as are nails, scales, feathers, horns, and claws. Hair grows over a large percentage of the human body surface serving protective, sensory, and sexual attractiveness functions. Human beings have about 1,400,000 hairs on their body, with about 450,000 of them to be found above the neck. You have about 100,000 hairs on your head and normally shed 25 to 100 a day while growing the an equivalent number of new hairs. Another 30,000 reside in mustaches, beards, or whiskers.

Blondes have usually much more scalp hair than hair red or dark haired heads. A single hair has a thickness of 0.02-0.04mm, so that 20-50 hair fibers next to each other make one millimeter. Hair is as strong as a wire of iron. It rips after applying a force equivalent to 60 kg (130 pounds), after it stretched itself for about 70%.

Hair, Laws, and Emotions

Hair fashions change rapidly and without a rational pattern. Hair styles that are out-of-favor with current fashions often evoke unexpectedly strong emotions and attempts to outlaw them are common. Ancient Persian men considered a shaved face as absurd. But their contemporaries, the Hittites, shaved their beard, mustache, eyebrows, and patches of hair near the temples. The Celts often shaved their beards but not their mustaches. Ancient Greeks wore beards and long hair but in the 4th century B.C., Alexander the Great ordered his soldiers to shave beards and keep head hair short.

Roman law once required prostitutes to wear blonde wigs, but the Emperor Claudius' wife, Messalina, wore a yellow wig on her nightly outings. The regulation was repealed and blonde wigs became the fashion of the day. The Romans generally shaved for about 500 years, but around the year 200, beards reappeared. This lasted until Charlemagne in 800 ordered his subjects, most of Western Europe, to shave. Beards started to return but the Bishop of Rouen warned in 1096 that men with beards were in danger of damnation. However, women in the Middle Ages often wore their hair long with great looping braids over their ears. Women revived the blonde hair fashion and dyed their hair blonde or wore blonde wigs.

In the 1500's men's head hair was cut short but beards flourished. Women generally braided their hair and many married women revived the Orthodox Jewish custom of only showing their hair only to their husband. In 1770, the British parliament passed a law that a marriage was voided if a man was tricked into marriage by a women using false hair, cosmetics, or high heels. This law has never been repealed.

In the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century, beards were generally shunned, but made a strong comeback during the Civil War. The World Wars of the twentieth century and military regulations caused men again to shave and shorten their hair. Women wore their hair short and curly, as curling iron and permanents began to arrive. The actress, Veronica Lake, brought back long, wavy, seductive blonde hair after her 1941 movie, "I Wanted Wings". But by the 1950's, both men and women were back to short hair, only to return to long hair by 1970 despite attempts by employers and schools to outlaw long hair. As the year 2000 approaches, head hair has shortened but short beards and goatees are becoming popular among young men.

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