Introduction It's right there on top of your head, ready, willing, and able to make a fool of you unless you master it in some way. It's hair, and it's funny. Hair is the biggest symbol of anxiety that we possess. Those who know what to do with it are admired, envied, and usually resented by those who don't. Everyone, hairy or bald, vain or oblivious, has had, at the very least, a passing fear about their hair. Some change their dos at the drop of a hat. Others don't and stick stubbornly with one hairstyle their whole lives through. There is always a lingering worry, in the back of everyone's head, so to speak, that it could be better or, at least, different.

After all, when you take off your clothes, your hair is the only thing left on you, a "kick me" sign attached to your flesh. Copyright copy; 1998 by Mimi Pond From CHAPTER ONE:Hair Neurosis Don't try to deny it. HAIR RULE NUMBER ONE:Your hair is a source of anxiety.It sits right on top of your head where everyone can see it and think to themselves, "Does she comb her hair with a pasta fork?" Or, "Poor dear, I suppose she's just given up." You can spend years and bucketfuls of money trying to find the right look. Then, even when you think you've achieved it, striding confidently from the salon, there's the quietly paranoid sensation that what you see is not what other people see. You can go insane. Oh there are the few among us who have perfect hair, but these are celebrities who have professionals constantly hovering over them.

If it's any consolation though, celebrities are even more anxious about their hair than you are, because often their hair is the sum total of who they are.Is it any wonder we're all so paranoid about our hair?BANGS! YOU'RE DEADBangs are just the beginning of hair anxiety. Who hasn't suffered the fate of too-short bangs, bangs that make you look shocked, surprised, and well.like someone who's been institutionalized but somehow managed to get ahold of some surgical scissors?THE HDAOf Course, our hair anxiety stems from the fact that, in this world, making fun of other people's hair is a recognized spectator sport. Some have a secret code to alert their friends to a hairdo in their immediate vicinity -- an HDA (Hairdo Alert). However, HAIR RULE NUMBER TWO:If you are a true hair spectator, all bad hair will find you.The HDA's in the world will eventually find themselves in an airport while you are stuck there for eight hours without anything to read. It's just that, at an airport with time on your hands, every unisex Billy Ray Cyrus variation imaginable, those rattails on small boys, the old white ladies with Afros, the gals who still have those petrified Farrah wings framing their faces, the men who've managed to sculpt for themselves completely transparent combover pompadours have all gathered here, apparently just to drive you crazy.

At the airport, the mall, on the bus, in the post office line -- this is where you get the impulse to become a hairdresser and just fix everyone's major hair faux pas. But then, to do that, you have to attend a seedy vocational school, also known as beauty college, also known as a beauty institute, with a bunch of scary, chain-smoking, rattailed comb-wielding, eyeliner-masked reform-school graduates, all named Anita Or Tina; practice finger waves on severed mannequin heads; learn about diseases of the scalp; graduate; somehow obtain a license; get a salon job, just so you can stand on your feet all day and put up with a bunch of neurotic whining, complaining crybabies all day long who want to yak about themselves and wonder why you can't make them look like their favorite TV star. Yes, you really have to be a Crusader to want to fix all the bad hair in the world.HAIR:The Resonating Touchstone of MemoryPoor, Poor Proust. if only he had known that the stupi.