Hair Brain

Hair Brain

Harian Metro (KL Edition), a Malaysian Malay tabloid, today reports how a 19-year old girl was molested by a man who claimed to be able to cure her hair loss problem "spiritually", using body massage. Only after three sessions of such "treatment" did she realise she was duped.

I suppose hair is very important to a woman. The other day, a female colleague of mine--let's call her Hairbrain-- asked me to comment on her newly dyed coiffure: does it make her look better? Usually I am quite brutal when it comes to assessing a woman's beauty; but this time, I had to agree: it did help to enhance her appearance.

When I asked how much she spent on the whole thing, Hairbrain told me it was close to 1 million rupiah, not including tips for the shampoo girl and hairstylist.

The day before, I had paid only 50,000 rupiah for an Indonesian-style creambath (a herbal scalp wash, coupled with a nice neck and shoulder massage) and a haircut by a skillful gay hairstylist at Rudy's--and that's probably the most I have ever spent at a hair salon in Jakarta. I know I am a cheapskate but the amount of money that women are willing to spend on these things never cease to amaze me.

But I still told her that it's a good investment: From a man's point of view, a woman's hair do carry a lot of marks.

In Scent of a Woman, Al Pacino, playing a blind retired colonel, raved about a woman's hair:

"Women. What could you say? Who made 'em? God must've been a f**king genius. Hair. They say that hair's everything you know. Have you ever buried your nose in a mountain of curls and just wanted to go to sleep forever?"

And Yeats, ever so eloquent about love, expressed it succintly in the poem, Brown Penny:

"I am looped in the loops of her hair"

Hairbrain, who always complain that books are so expensive, did not hesitate a second to spend 1 million rupiah on her hair. That is probably more than what she spends buying books and trashy female magazines in one year. But I suppose she has got her priorities right.

Being educated in some of the best schools in Australia and Switzerland, Hairbrain can claim to have "brains". But still she was dumped by her ex-boyfriend for a curvacious Cengkareng golf caddy with luscious hair! (Heard they are happily married now).

I suppose Hairbrain learned the hard way that most men go for hair, not brains. Which man can resist the sight of lovely tresses flowing down the smooth slender shoulders of a lissome young woman?

Being a man, I have to reluctantly agree. And having heard so much about the female caddies of Cengkareng, lately I am seriously considering my friends' advice to take up golf.