Hair we grow again

I like Ben Goldacre and his friends. They call out bullshitters. I thought that the upswell of pro-science, anti-woo feeling would get rid of the most egregious charlatans. 

Apparently not. Just past the Observer fashion spread encouraging men to buy tracksuit tops (£395), tracksuit trousers (£195) and trainers (£390) so that we can all look unemployed, was this gem which attracted my eye because as the years progress, your Vole is looking more like a hairless rat every day. 

So. The 'iGrow'. What an appalling name, by the way. As though sticking 'i' in front of anything attracts the cachet of an Apple product. But let's delve further, shall we. 

'Laser' energy. Call me an English Lit graduate, but LASER = 'Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation'. It's a strong and focussed beam of light. I'm finding it very hard to believe that this product has a laser licence like my CD player. Given the use of lasers for hair removal, it's hard to accept that lasers will help hair regrow. And it seems that Laser Therapy is by and large bullshit. 

What about 'LED energy'. Well, LED = Light Emitting Diode. So the energy emitted is in fact 'light'. 

Perhaps it has been proven that strengthening hair follicles might lead to regrowth, but that looks like the only sustainable claim here. The rest is a cunninc mish-mash of conditionals: you can 'expect' (sounds promising) to see reduction in "the appearance of hair loss". Not hair loss, you understand. Just the appearance. 

Let's have a look at the website. There are bound to be academic references to the research there… aren't there?

Um… no. Apparently there are 'hundreds' of clinical trials of LLLT. It's just that they haven't the time to list or link to any of them. But a man in 1967 said that hair grows in the right light. Which explains why your chest hair isn't down to your ankles. Not enough light, you see. 

But what's this?

LLLT has been shown to stop the appearance of hair loss and help rejuvenate hair for anyone with genetic forms of hair loss, such as male/female pattern baldness. Those with significant hair loss due to disease or medical causes will not benefit from LLLT.

I see. So despite the hair loss being genetic, i.e. a fundamental part of your operating system, shining a laser and an LED lightbulb on to it will make it regrow. Whereas 'disease or medical causes' (whatever that means) won't. Mmmm… I smell bullshit. 

But we should always give these guys a fair chance. Let's see if there have been any clinical trials into LLLT and hair loss. Oooh: there was one! How did it go?

This study has been withdrawn prior to enrollment.

Oh dear. Northwestern decided to ponder whether women with breast cancer might regrow their hair after chemotherapy. They pulled the plug before testing it on anyone. Who knows why? Perhaps they gave everyone an iGrow and they all turned into Rapunzel. 

And the LED treatment? Well, four private dermatologists tested a HairMax Laser Comb on 110 men. Some of them had thicker hair. 

 significant improvements in overall hair regrowth were demonstrated in terms of patients' subjective assessment 

But wait. What's that magic word? 'Subjective'. So they thought their hair had grown back. Personally, I got up this morning and subjectively assessed my height at 6'3". Yet nobody's pointed out my trousers cuffs are flapping around my knees yet. 

Still, you can plug your iPod into the iGrow. And drown out the mockery. 

New Stratagems, the radiant Lock to gain…

The Peer now spreads the glitt'ring Forfex wide,T'inclose the Lock; now joins it, to divide.Ev'n then, before the fatal Engine clos'd,A wretched Sylph too fondly interpos'd;Fate urg'd the Sheers, and cut the Sylph in twain,(But Airy Substance soon unites again)The meeting Points that sacred Hair disseverFrom the fair Head, for ever and for ever! Then flash'd the living Lightnings from her Eyes,And Screams of Horror rend th' affrighted Skies.Not louder Shrieks to pitying Heav'n are cast,When Husbands or when Lap-dogs breath their last,Or when rich China Vessels, fal'n from high,In glittring Dust and painted Fragments lie!

Which is a roundabout way of saying that I submitted to the barber's scythe today. Every time I go, the 19-year old inside me screams blue murder. Even as a teen, I knew that time and circumstance changes one's perspective,  and wondered what the older me would make of the younger one, and vice versa.

In the case of hair, my inner teen is in mourning. It was OK to have a mane of jet-black hair most of the way down my back when I had the build of an anorexic whippet and wore only black. Whether or not it suited me I have no idea, but it was a justified reaction against year's of my mother's brutal, and distinctly unartistic basin haircuts. All six of us - regardless of gender - received the same utilitarian treatment. For someone trained in surgery, she was remarkably clumsy with the scissors too - my ears were almost Spock-shaped by the time I was 18.

As the years and pounds accumulated, the hair got shorter, thinner and less distributed: I've seen the balding pony-tailed future and its name is Rossi. By now, I've got a position on hairstyles: I'm agin 'em. These days I just want some hair, mostly on my head, to avoid sunburn. But as a marker of passing time, my enlarging forehead is a fine sundial for the progress of the decades.

(The quotation is from Pope's 'The Rape of the Lock': it's very good).

"Maybe nobody minds about things as much as me."

Update, August 2010: Hello to my repeat visitor from Grosse Pointe, Michigan (great film, by the way). Glad you can't stay away. Do they have Peep Show in the US? Leave a comment, tell us why you keep coming back!

Friends, colleagues and drunken strangers on trains and in the street have repeatedly remarked upon my resemblance to Mr. David Mitchell, the ubiquitous comedian with whom I share a birthday, a tailor, and every single opinion.

My friends will also be familiar with my antipathy towards hairstyling. Haircuts = fine. Hairstyles = needless complication (though I am being educated in this matter).

In this fine video, Mitchell lays off the cultural implication of hairstyles, but summarises my feelings about going to the barber with considerable wit.

I've never accepted the offer of a wash in the salon. I wash my hair before going. It seems polite.

Selected Peep Show quotations which remind me of me:


Peep Show is a comedy about an uptight loser and a lazy selfish loser. It's photographed from 'behind the eyes' of the characters, and the dialogue in brackets is their internal monologue.

Jez: You're a posh spaz.

Mark: Oh really? Well I'd love to know in what way I am a posh spaz.

Jez: In the way that you do posh, spazzy things like... tidying up and... ironing your socks.

Mark: I do not iron my socks!

Jez: Socks, shirts, whatever!

TV: I'm basically looking to meet someone like myself.

Mark: (Pfftt. That's exactly the opposite of what I'm looking for.)

Mark: [Before having toast for breakfast] (Brown for first course, white for pudding. Brown is savoury, white's the treat. Of course I'm the one who's laughing because I actually love brown toast.

Mark: (Well that was a fucking disaster. I want compensation. I want reparations. I want the Rhineland. It's going to be 1919 all over again, fuck the inevitable backlash.)

Mark: This is the sort of thing people do when they're having a good time.

Mark: Dancing? Y-yes... dancing... I love... dancing... (It makes me look like a coma victim being stood up and zapped with a cattle prod.)

Mark: (Sure, an orgy sounds great, but you're basically just multiplying the number of people you're not going to be able to look in the eye afterwards.)

Mark: I'm dangerously close to getting what I want. Feels a bit weird.

Jez: You're still living in your Hitchhiker's Guide world where you'll go around in your bathrobe and have a nice cup of tea.

Mark: (Look at me; I've got a girlfriend. A proper girlfriend reading a best-seller about child-abuse. I go out and have croissant. I'm just a normal functioning member of the human race and there's no way anyone can prove otherwise.)

Mark: Nothing means anything to you, does it? Friendship, loyalty - they're just fusty old words like sixpence and codpiece to you, aren't they?

Mark: She’s good for me, Jez, She’s dragging me into the twenty-first century with its meaningless logos and ironic veneration of tyrants. It’s all good, my friend.

[about Jez and Sophie being nice to Mark after he walked in on them almost having sex]

Mark: (Why are they being so nice? Maybe they've had a big chat about me and they're suddenly realised I was right about North Korea, I was right about the European Constitution, and by God I think I'm right about the congestion charge!)

Mark: (Look at them all - the Christians. It's not fair. I could be that happy if I believed in a lot of rubbish.)

Mark: Why does everything have to be fun to be worthwhile? Crick and Watson have discovered the double helix. Did they do it on a skateboard? No? Well fuck off then, I'm not interested.

Mark: The absolute worst thing anyone could say about you is that you were a selfish, moral blank, whose lazy cynicism and sneering, ironic take on the world encapsulates everything wrong with a generation. But you my friend are not evil.

Beardy Weirdy

I've noticed (and mentioned to friends) the preponderance of beards on indie musicians recently. Beards are definitely signifiers of seriousness at the moment (even to Wayne Rooney and David Beckham) but also of authenticity - a riposte to the waxed, primped, heavily-prepared confection of people like, well, David Beckham in an earlier phase.

Thankfully, a better writer than I has mused on the subject of beards in music, taking a Barthian approach (Barthes analysed Roman hairstyles in films). Enjoy it here.

Cut and dried

Oh yes, one more point in response to Cynical Ben and others on this thread: my expensive professional haircut did not attract single ladies at the wedding, rendering Ben's theory redundant.

Hair today, gone tomorrow…

Morning all. I've had a very pleasant start to the day - a swim with Neal, a walk in the rain (at last) and a decent breakfast at the Romanian-Italian place. I didn't get round to a haircut or ticket-buying, so they're on the list for today.

Did I ever mention that I divide the world into haircuts and hairstyles? Everybody needs a haircut at some point. It's just sensible management. However, hairstyles are the mark of a mind with too little to occupy it. Hairstyles are a desperate attempt to catch up with ephemerality, of a need to comply with the arbitrary whims of a soi-disant élite. I know that, like all matters of appearance, they consist of a complex social code (I've read my Barthes on movie hairstyles), but I just can't help thinking that anyone that bothered about their appearance has too much time on their hands.

I should probably confess to my hair history. I had a pudding bowl cut, thanks to my mother, as did all my siblings regardless of gender or wishes. After that, I grew my jet black hair nearly down to my waist, which at least distracted from my face and went well with the skinny frame, black DMs, black jeans, black shirt and black biker jacket. Yes, I was a student. After a while, however, the black became brown and the locks became sparse. I decided that the Francis Rossi look wasn't for me, and chopped it all off for a short-back-and-sides, which is sensible but just doesn't work when moshing.

Anyone else want to confess to particularly egregious choices?