Long Hair: Realism

[cjsmith]

One of my pet peeves is authors, usually fantasy authors, who give a character enormously long luxurious hair and then never mention it when it would matter. They linger over descriptions of the protagonist they wish they could be, but when they put her (always her) in a situation where her hair would have to interact with something, somehow nothing happens. The laws of physics are suspended! They're wanking, these authors; they haven't done the simplest research.

People who haven't had buttlength hair may not know this stuff. (Authors who make shit up have no excuse not to ask around about it.)

There's a good reason you don't see many long-haired athletes. Consider an aikido roll. Imagine standing up with your knee or foot on your own braid. At least in a roll it's the hair-bearer's OWN knee; in a pin, often it's the other guy's knee. Exercise for the reader: list female protagonists with "a braid as thick as her wrist" who do hand-to-hand combat a lot.

My hair takes most of a day to dry. Blonde hair (beloved of fantasy authors) has the slenderest strands of any human hair type. According to one medical site I found in ten seconds on google, blondes also have the most numerous follicles. THIS HAIR TAKES A WHILE TO DRY. Put it in a ponytail, and my hair may not dry until my next shower. This is worth knowing if an author wants to describe the effects of a nice breeze half an hour after that dunking in the river.

Let's not talk in detail about jobs such as scooping the litterbox or cleaning up what the cat left on the carpet. I'll just say that a headband, ponytail, or braid does not keep a gal from having to wash the ends of her hair. What keeps that from happening is the habitual, nearly-unconscious shoulder and neck movements that keep the hair behind her back. If the character has these habitual movements ingrained, Mr. Right is not going to catch his first sight of her with her hair caressing her breasts.

How about that old squeeze-through-the-narrow-window-in-a-stone-castle trick? If the loose hair is not in her eyes, it's in between the shoulders or hips and the stone. It's gonna hurt. Somehow, though, what stings afterward is a knee. Go figure. (I won't ask why they all seem to go headfirst. You'd think after sequel number two or three one of these chicks would learn.)

I love this one: the heroine of a romance novel whose hair is drying while "spread out around her head in a fan on the pillow". Just how far away from the headboard is this pillow? Two and a half feet? Maybe our heroine is only three feet tall.

And how come the wind never blows hair into the owner's face? Do proper long-tressed maidens or mage students have built-in headwinds?

Okay, I'll stop now...

Comments

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Ooooo, yes, that pulling-and-slightly-stinging sensation when someone comes up and rubs my back. It's unpleasant enough for me that I move my body away. I can only surmise that this is pleasant for the other person, because people keep doing it. I have started to develop a habit of getting my hair out of the way when someone I don't know extends a hand. The guy (yes, always a guy) usually looks at me funny, but there's a bonus: that's often when he clues in that what *I* want might not be what *he* wants.

[oddhack.livejournal.com]

Dancing lead-follow dances with someone with very long hair makes me a bit nervous. I don't want to put my right hand over their hair in order to get shoulder contact, for fear of pulling or restraining, but it's awkward to flip enough of it out of the way to reach the actual back - and the problem recurs every time we get back in closed position.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and good contact is essential there, as opposed to somebody putting their hand on my back just 'cause they have to touch SOMEthing or they'll die. I usually put my hair up (or at least in a pony tail) back when I was doing that sort of dancing.