whiskers

12:27 PM 11/22/08

One time at Goodwill I saw a woman with even more whiskers than I have. She had them all over her chin and upper lip, but not on her cheeks. They were shaved but they were a few millimeters long. It was a while ago and I'm not sure I remember, but her whiskers were pale colored and salt-and-peppered with grey hair. She was very short, about 4'6" or so, and very friendly, and she stood next to me and started talking randomly to me while we stood in line, and kept on talking for several minutes. She touched me frequently while talking to me and stood very close. She was thin and relatively pretty or average looking. Her hair was cut short if I recall. She said she had a husband. All the cashiers recognized her. I thought her whiskers were beautiful. I also see very long-haired women there sometimes. There is something about Goodwill that attracts these people, or maybe it's just something on that side of town, I don't know. But I like that place.

I used to have more eyebrow hair going slightly over the bridge of my nose, when I was younger. But I was taught that I was supposed to pluck that hair. I used to over-pluck my eyebrows till there was almost nothing left, and then I also cut them short with scissors - even though my eyebrows are of average thickness. The plucked hair over the nose bridge never really grew back, and it's now sparse. I think plucking can scar or destroy the root of the hair permanently. Nowadays I love thick eyebrows on both men and women, and I look for natural unplucked eyebrows. I love that hair over the bridge of the nose - that's what I don't seem to have much of anymore.

Whenever there's a rule or custom saying you have to remove something, it's usually something that other people don't have and can't get. If you have thin eyebrows, you can't get thick ones. If somebody LIKES thick eyebrows, then the thin-eyebrowed people can't do anything about it, they can't compete. So the trick is to make EVERYONE have thin eyebrows. It's possible to remove things, but much more difficult to add things back if they weren't there to begin with or if they were removed.

This fits with one of those psychological studies I read a long time ago. This particular study seemed to be applicable to real life. I forget the details, but it went something like this: They found out that if one person is 'losing' in some kind of competition, then they try to ruin it for everybody else as well. They'd rather see a whole world full of suffering people, instead of themselves suffering alone, while leaving everybody else at peace. The study was designed in a way that might possibly increase someone's tendency to do that, though.

I don't see these things as 'competition.' I see them as 'variety' and I like variety. When I see other women with very long hair, or hair longer than mine, I might feel some envy, but at the same time, they are not 'competition,' and the competition isn't destructive. They are more like 'cooperation' or 'supporters.' I was HORRIFIED recently when I saw someone who used to have almost waist-length thick healthy blond hair, and natural eyebrows, and no makeup - and she suddenly chopped her hair off to shoulder length. Why did she do it?

I like to say: underneath one value there is always another value. If you have a whole group of people, and they all have full-length hair, then you end up focusing on some value other than hair length. When a lot of people are meeting the criteria 'fully grown hair,' then you can value people for other reasons. I don't want a world where I have a 'monopoly' on some attribute. I would rather see more people, not fewer, doing these things. I don't want to have a 'competitive advantage' on those things. (They nag me whenever I mention references to books and movies, but I have to mention Atlas Shrugged here. Some critics of Atlas Shrugged make fun of Galt's Gulch, and how everyone there was friendly and tolerant about their competition, instead of envious and destructive of each other. They said that was impossible and would never happen in the real world. But I actually FEEL that way about other women with long hair. I would rather see more of them, even if they out-compete me.)

An example is this: if you lived in the mainstream culture where everyone keeps their hair just a little below shoulder length, on average, and you REALLY loved long hair, then you could be attracted to someone with long hair, but they have a terrible personality. That would be frustrating. It could be a horrible person, or they could have lots of other problems, but your selection would be very limited.

I don't have time to keep writing....