HAIR & NAILSShelly: I love my hair ... but only where I want it.Why do human beings have hair? Why, in other words, are we not truly 'naked apes'?
As Desmond Morris's famous phrase reminds us, unlike all other primates, our species lost its thick covering of fur. Yet in certain key areas -- the crotch, the underarms, the top of the head and, for men, the chest and lowerpart of the face -- rather than disappearing, our original fur was gradually transformed into hair. Male hairiness can be explained as a simple marker of gender. The positioning of hairy patches at the crotch and underarms is probably linked to the fact that these are also the sites of myriad scent-producing glands -- the thatch of hair serving to retain scents which, while increasingly perceived as undesirable, were at least originally highly sexually arousing.
Head hair, however, eludes simple explanation. Arguably, in cold climates it helps in keeping the head warm and, conversely, in very hot places it helps to ward off the direct rays of the sun. But while there is no doubt truth in this, the role of hair as insulation doesn't seem to provide a full explanation. Why, for example, was hair retained (or at least not noticeably reduced in quantity) in geographically temperate areas where neither extreme cold nor extreme sun posed a threat?
Desmond Morris has suggested that head hair developed primarily as a marker of species -- our ancestors' naked bodies topped by flowing manes of hair immediately setting them apart from other species. This makes sense but I doubt that it is the whole story. What strikes me is the extraordinary extent to which human hair can be customized by cutting to varying lengths, braiding, knotting into ornamental shapes, razing off, dyeing, coating with mud, wax, animal fats, etc., colouring with powders or dyes, tying with cords or ribbons, curling, frizzing, backcombing or straightening, extending with animals or human hair, adorning with anything from feathers to flowers, beads to bones. More so even than skin, our hair seems to have been designed specifically as a medium of expression. There's simply so much you can do with it.
Put crudely, I'm suggesting that we have hair so that we can have hairdressers. If this seems a frivolous explanation this is only because we so persistently underrate the practical, even crucial, significance of body decoration. Like all species, our ancestors needed vidual differentiation from other animals but, uniquely, as a tribally organized species our ancestors needed the means of differentiating themselves according to which tribe they belonged to. We have already seen how modifications of the skin (for example, by means of body painting, tattooing, scarification and piercing) can serve this purpose but positioned so prominently at the top of the body, so perfectly suited to customizing and so minimally 'functional' in other senses of the term, head hair seems to be that part of the body most purpose-built as a medium of expression.
While Desmond Morris's explanation hinges simply on the assumption that early humans had hair on their heads, my explanation derives from the view that our ancestors -- like present day traditional peoples -- customized their hair in tribally distinctive ways. Unlike Morris, who visualizes the original Homo sapiens with 'unadorned and unstyled' hair, I see head hair as developing in tandem with -- stimulated by -- early experiments in its adornment and styling.
Of course, as with skin, the hair of our more distant ancestors has long since disappeared. Yet the fact that no human society has ever been discovered in which hair is left to simply grow naturally points towards the view that the practice of customizing hair is of great antiquity. Contemporary barbering equipment, permanent wave machines, dyeing techniques and so forth may make 'hair art' easier, but evidence from surviving tribal societies makes it clear that extraordinary results can be achieved by technologically simple means -- techniques which could well have been developed and exploited long, long ago.
Consider, for example, the amazing hairstyles sported by the males of the Nuba tribes of the Sudan:
"To the closely cropped hair (hair is never allowed to exceed about 1/2 to 1/3 of an inch in length) is added beeswax. This results in a type of cake, as the beeswax is not rubbed in but simply stuck on. The wax cake is stippled with a comb or small stick, and then dusted by shaking on the appropriate colour ... Young men may attach feathers along the sagittal crest -- perhaps reversing the direction of the feathers on either side of the rum. Sometimes a series of thorns or seedpods will be used ... The entire hair fashion may also be sprinkled with herbs (tao) for protection -- or with bits of blueing or ground mica for decorative flair." -- [James C. Faris, Nuba Personal Art, p. 65]
Or, those worn by young Masai warriors:
"The typical Masai warrior, known as a moran, grew his hair very long and had it styled by a fellow mora. This arduous task sometimes took 15 or 20 hours to perform. First, the hair was parted from ear to ear, smeared with fat, red ochre and clay and twisted into as many as 400 individual strands. The strands at the back of the head were then grouped into 3 pigtails around long, pliant sticks, and the hair ends were bound to the sticks neatly with sheep skin, so that they tapered to a point. The strands of hair at the front of the head were arranged to fall forward over the face." [ Esi Sagay, African Hairstyles, pp. 30-31]
Not only do such distinctive hairstyles prominently proclaim tribal identity, they also vividly mark personal differences of status within each tribe. While it is only recently in the West that hairstyles have served to signal 'tribal' membership (for example, the Teddy Boy's quiff, the Skinhead's crop, the Punk's mohican or the Rapper's razored designs) hair and status have long been linked in Western history. Typically, the more 'impractical' a hairstyle the more it demonstrated wealth and aristocratic standing. This reached amazing extremes in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries when the hair of high-status women reached for the skies with the aid of complex hidden structures and was adorned with everything from birdcages filled with live butterflies to spinning, clockwork windmills.
Alternatively, enormous wigs were worn -- by European men as well as women. This was not, however, a new or even uniquely Western invention. The aristocracy of ancient Egypt, for example, had worn dazzling wigs in colours like indigo blue or copper red. The wigs worn by certain 'Big Men' in the highlands of Papua New Guinea make even those4 of 17th-century Europeans seem discreet in comparison:
"The wig was built on a frame of pliant cane strips, bound with lianas. To this the manufacturers fastened lengths of hair, sewing them with a flying-fox bone needle and bark thread. They placed the completed wig on a stand underneath a banana stem which was slung horizontally across supports. Lumps of melted resin from the kilt tree ... were placed on the banana stem and allowed to drip on to the wig in order to set the hair hard. The makers next smoothed the surfaced down with a rolling-pin, and rubbed pig or pandanus grease over it. Inside the frame they placed a bark-cloth lining. Finally they painted the wig in bright colours with chevrons, streaks, triangles ... On the day of dancing its wearer and his helpers would further fringe the wig with scarab beetles enclosed in bands of yellow orchid vine, light-coloured furs, and the leaves of a plant which is used in moka ritual to attract valuables. The topknot was left unpainted, but round it twined another bright fur, while from it sprang a medley of feathers set in a circlet." [Andrew and Marilyn Strathern, Self-Decoration in Mount Hagen, pp. 87-88]
'Bigwigs' in every sense, such headpieces are seen as a source of great power (especially in attracting women) and for this reason their manufacture is ritually protected -- the process taking place in great secrecy, the wig-maker prohibited from having sex until the wig's completion. Of course, the equation of hair (even in the form of a wig) and power is hardly unique to New Guinea -- as is well illustrated by the biblical story of Samson. On the one hand, the extraordinary power of hair clearly derives from and reflects its almost limitless capacities as a medium of expression. On the other hand, its power seems to derive from its strange nature -- a part of us (what could be more personal?) which is actually dead and alien to us.
This is the point of overlap between hair and nails. Both, of course, can be decorated (in the case of nails, a body art which, especially in America and amongst black communities in Britain, has reached great sophistication in recent years) but just as importantly, both share a unique, intermediary status between the living and the (un) dead. In many traditional societies this indeterminate status causes great concern over hair and nail clippings -- obliging people to bury them secretly to keep enemies from casting dangerous spells over them.
We in the contemporary West are more nonchalant about such things -- our locks mingling with others on the floor of the hairdresser's, our nail clippings flicked casually on the bathroom floor. But can we really and truly be nonchalant about that which -- only a moment before -- was an intrinsic part of ourselves? The Victorians at least seem to have been aware of the unique power of such 'waste products' -- the lock of hair secreted in a gold case like a religious relic or fetishistically braided into a watch chain as a constant reminder of one's beloved and a symbol of intimacy.
What we do not explicitly acknowledge in our day to day practices nevertheless seems to surface powerfully in our erotic imaginations. The Vamp's sexy long nails only one step removed from the Vampire's talons, the 'chest wig' of the Disco dandy only one step removed from the werewolf's fur. That which is halfway between me/not me, the living and the dead, is also halfway between the human and the animal.
"Both hair and nails remind us of what we once were. Yet at the same time, in their decoration, their customizing, they clearly set us apart from all other creatures. This is especially true of hair which, while reminiscent of fur, is a uniquely human feature -- not only in its intrinsic characteristics, but more significantly, in its capacity for modification.
For the Nuba, the significance of proper hair grooming extends all the way to the definition of the human species. Hair grooming, the ability to remove hair, and smooth bodies are all characteristics of humans -- characteristics not all shared by animals. It is not language (which monkeys, in Southeastern Nuba myths, once shared with man), but shaving -- the choice to have or not to have hair -- that distinguishes humans from other 'moving species.'" [James C. Faris, Nuba Personal Art, pp. 55-56]
Surely the Nuba are right. For only human beings -- The Customized Ape -- would transform fur into a 'crowning glory' and claws into 'nail art.'