Dave T’s Pros and Cons of Stuff Everyone Has: Hairs

Go look in a mirror. Look at the area above your eyes. See those sideways Cs (or maybe one long sideways I)? Those are your eyebrows. They are made up of HAIRS.

I chose eyebrows because that’s a place nearly everyone has hairs. If you don’t have any hairs there, you may be suffering from alopecia universalis (all-over-the-place baldness).

Don’t know what they are?

Hairs are protein filaments that grow up through the skin from bulbs underneath the skin. The main component of a hair fiber is keratin—and if you read Week 2 of this blog, you know that’s also the main component of fingernails.

The body is covered in short fine hairs known as vellus hairs—with the exception of the palms, back of the ears, lips, belly button, soles of the feet, and a few other spots—but we won't discuss this type of hair. For the purpose of this article, we'll focus on terminal hair, the long, dark hair we can all see. And we'll discuss both head hair and androgenic (all-over-the-place) hair.

Pros:

• Variety is the spice of life. Hairs come in different colors. Without hairs, we wouldn’t have brunettes, blonds, and redheads. We’d only be able to distinguish people by the color of their eyes. And we’d have to use phrases like, “She’s a tall, leggy bald.”

• Hairs often cover up scars (though hairs won’t grow on a scar, they'll grow around it), birthmarks, or alien-shaped heads. Men, if you have a big ugly scar on your jawline, grow a beard. Ladies, if you have a big ugly scar on your jawline, convert to Islam so you can cover everything but your eyes.

• Girls pull each other’s hairs during catfights. Without hairs, those fights would be much less sexy. Unless the girls pulled each other’s boobs instead. That would rule!

• Some men and women are able to compensate for a meh face with lustrous locks.

• Hairs keep us warm. I once shaved my head in the dead of winter, and when I went outside without a hat, I missed my head hairs in a profound way.

• Without hairs, we'd have a really hard time knowing that a dude had turned into a wolf man. You’d say, “Hey, Gilbert, did you always have that underbite?” and Gilbert the Wolf Man would tear your throat out.

Total Pros: 6

Cons:

• When not washed, head hair can be stinky, greasy, and/or dandruffy. Body hair can get sweaty and matted and hormonally stinked up.

• Mullets, comb-overs, dreadlocks/corn rows on white people, soul patches, faux hawks, male-pattern Mohawks (where a balding guy pushes the hair in the center of his head into a Mohawk that he fails to realize makes him look balder), Fu Manchus, braided goatees, and other self-perpetrated hair treasons.

• Hair on toes, knuckles, backs, moles, ears, etc. On girls, we can add upper lips, chests, legs, underarms, nipple borders, happy trails, and anywhere else where it’s okay on a guy and gross on a girl.

• At the risk of getting Seussical: Grooming is time-consuming.

• Neck beards.

• The sensation of hairs in my mouth sends me into mild convulsions. Just seeing hairs in my food can ruin my appetite. Cleaning hairs out of the drain is no walk in the park either.

• There's a slight chance that being able to pull each other’s hairs during a cat fight is holding women back from pulling each other’s boobs.

Total Cons: 7

So, 6 Pros and 7 Cons. I think we should stick with hair just because we’re used to it. I like pretty girls with hair out of a TRESemmé commercial. But if we’d never known hair, I don’t think we’d miss it at all. So if we’re evolving into hairless beings, that’s fine by me.

‘Til next time, Ciao!
Dave T

Dave Terruso is half of the sketch comedy duo Animosity Pierre.