The Male Ego and Hair

October 1st, 2007 · 1 Comment

Gimme head with hair
Long beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming,
Streaming, flaxen, waxen

Give me down to there hair
Shoulder length or longer
Here baby, there mama
Everywhere daddy daddy

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it
My hair

I had a life changing experience seven years ago when I shaved off my thirty-year mustache. Samson had a life changing experience when Delilah cut off his hair, which gave him super strength. However, he regained his strength when his hair grew back. Ergo, I need to regrow my mustache to get my strength back.

Where did our obsession with hair come from? And is this focus on facial hair somehow unnatural, or is our constant removal of this naturally growing hair a wrong-headed notion? Why do we spend so much time thinking about the hair on our head or the lack thereof?

Last week The Redhead asked, “Have you thought about how our lives have changed since you shaved off your mustache?” I admitted I had not, but it started me thinking: What was our life like when I had my mustache, and how did it change after I shaved it off?

With Mustache

I grew a mustache naturally, meaning, as a teenager, I just never shaved my upper lip. For the first few years, no one noticed I had a mustache, but I knew it was there (It’s a man thing). Gradually it thicken and darken over the years, which pleased me to no end.

Our lives with the mustache followed a natural progression of jobs and houses. Here is the overview of thirty years with the mustache:

11 different company jobs
3 businesses started
8 houses lived in
4 of 8 houses we owned
Income increase every year

Without Mustache

I held a sales job for a national office machine company, and after eighteen months accepted a promotion to Sales Manager in the largest sales territory in the Southwest Region. The company had a “no facial hair” policy, but my mustache and I had slipped under the radar in a remote territory without much supervision. The promotion would bring me into the spotlight, so I decided to shave the mustache before moving to Houston.

Long story short: I left that company thirteen months later in pure frustration, taking my clean shaven face with me. Here is what the seven years since then have looked like without the mustache.

2 different company jobs
1 business started
7 houses lived in
0 houses owned
Income decreases every year

As you might conclude, The Redhead is getting a bit frosty about the housing situation. In the last seven years, we’ve lived in one less house than in the previous thirty years. That’s unacceptable and needs to change. The income is another story, but we’re working to rectify that issue.