No 91: HAIR
Look at you, you’re a right state. You need a haircut. Tell you what. Sit down for a second and I’ll do it for you. I’m pretty good. I once cut my own and hardly anyone could tell.
Get your hands off me! I do not want a haircut. I’m growing it long.
Look, there’s long and there’s too long. You look like Rapunzel with terrible split ends. It’s not as if we live at the top of a locked tower in the forest. And you’re not Samson. It’s not going to sap your strength if I lop a few inches off. You’ll thank me for it.
No I won’t. I’ll call the police and then you’ll be charged with actual bodily harm.
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Keep yer wig on. What are you talking about?
Don’t you follow the latest developments in coiffure law? In the High Court this week, it was ruled that magistrates in Dudley had been wrong to decide that a man who cut off a woman’s ponytail had no case to answer on a charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. Michael Smith, 21, had taken a pair of scissors to the tresses of his on-off girlfriend Michelle Tether.
But how can it be ABH? Hair’s all just horrible dead stuff.
Not so, according to the judges. They consulted Gray’s Anatomy and other learned works before concluding that hair was a part of the body, whether it was above or below the surface of the skin and could be regarded as a person’s “crowning glory”. To a woman, in particular, it was “a vitally important part of the body”. When a significant portion of a woman’s hair is cut off without her consent it is a “serious matter”.
Sounds like splitting hairs to me. British women spend a fortune on their manes — about £30,000 in a lifetime. Why don’t we just shave off all yours and spend the money on a loft conversion? Give me the scissors. I have an idea of something of yours we could chop off instead.
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Do say: But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her (I Corinthians, xi, 15).
Don’t say: Go up, thou bald head (II Kings, ii, 23).