House of Eratosthenes

I recall reading an article somewhere about making homemade napalm out of gasoline and soap flakes. No, don’t be alarmed, if I was interested I’d have saved the link. But it got me to thinking…supposedly the soap is used to give it that gelatinous, sticky consistency. Whoever’s making napalm out of soap is missing a real opportunity with this yellow crap coming out of my nose. See, with these pounds and pounds of kleenex being wadded up and tossed in the (full) wastebaskets, I’m really instituting my own disarmament program.

And doing lots and lots of sleeping.

Mmmkay, that’s just about as much graphic information as I’m going to give. I know I’ve crossed the “TMI” line already.

So Cassy has a post up about some propeller-beanie-white-coat-egghead researchers Across The Pond in Jolly Ol’ Britain…actually, they aren’t “hard” type scientists-folks, they’re Relationship Ekspurts…discharging their opinions, that a woman cutting her hair short is a sign that she’s not craving sex with us guys.

Does short hair mean that a woman has given up on sex? Absolutely not.

But it might mean there are more important things to her than attracting a man.

The British male, in particular, is an unimaginative beast.

He doesn’t look at a woman’s chic and sleek new cut and think how fabulously fashionable it is.

He doesn’t assess its softly cut layers and think how perfectly it frames her features.

All he sees is the absence of the long mane that he instinctively equates with ‘youth’ and ‘sex’.

So, if a woman is looking for a man, she’s not going to cut her hair off.

It’s a fact that long hair has a broader appeal to the opposite sex – I’d say nine out of ten men prefer long hair to short – which means long-haired ladies are more likely to catch a guy’s eye.

I find that to be a pretty reasonable set of statements, although it isn’t as well-sourced as I think it should be, appearing in a prestigious tabloid such as Daily Mail and droning on about such an intricate and weighty issue. In fact — side note here — I think the selection of authorities is all wrong. When you study things like how the sexes attract each other, “researchers” are dudes, usually dudes who don’t get any. That may seem silly, but Relationship Ekspurt is several rungs further down on the authority ladder. They’re chicks. You don’t ask chicks what men find sexy. Not if you want to get hold of some hard, reliable information that means something.

In fact, Cassy and I both picked out the same Ekspurt as offering the most sane and sensible thesis in the entire article — a dude who cuts hair. Not because he’s a dude, but because of what he said and how much sense it makes.

When the time comes to find out what dudes like in a woman, there are two kinds of women: Women who ask other women what’s what, and women who really want to learn truth instead of wasting their time. Well, I’m a dude. And I’m never quite so confident in my opinion about how to appeal to a woman’s primal, lustful instincts, as when my nostrils are all jammed-up airtight with germy yellow snot.

So since Cassy was specifically asking for further opinions, Casanova blossomed forward. Hey, I’m just the giving type.

1. Take the “British” off of it. Regardless of nationality, men are an overwhelming disappointment to the lady who’s spent some extra cash having her mane chiseled down “artistically.” I don’t care how sensitive you think he is, there’s something in each haircut you wanted him to notice that he didn’t notice.

2. At my age (42), when a lady gives off vibes she’s not interested in a gentleman, four out of five of us will have the good sense to say “no accounting for lousy taste” and move on, with the one out of five grasping at straws ready to do ANYTHING to make her interested.

3. Cut my age in half, and down there, the ratio flips around. Eighty percent of the studs have an insatiable desire for the apathetic and unattainable.

4. Too many women find out too late how the male mind works, and then make the mistake of applying those lessons throughout life. And so it becomes a semi-regular event that the shorter ‘do is used as a seduction device…thou shalt be interested in me, because I am NOT interested in you. With tragic results. I used to adore Lori Laughlin and Jeanne Tripplehorn. And, believe it or not, between ‘93 and ‘96 Hillary Clinton found a way to shed what little sex appeal she might’ve had. Go on, find some seventeen-year-old pics of Arkansas’ First Lady before lynching me for that remark.

5. Continuing with that thought…women don’t really dress or apply makeup or get their hair cut to please men. They do it to please other women. If that were not true, miniskirts and go-go boots would still be in style.

7. The researchers are being clinical-minded, to excess, when they talk about “wanting sex.” Note the hairdresser discussed in the article who says most of his customers who want their hair chopped are already in a stable relationship. Long hair isn’t a sign of wanting sex; it’s a sign of being in the market (or rather, short hair is a sign of not being in the market).

8. If three women in a clique are not in the market, and a fourth member of the clique is, the three are not going to be very nice to the one.

9. Women are vastly more sensitive to clique-politics than men. Evolution has molded and shaped the female side of the gender to live within the village walls, while us men run around outside the walls and do the hunting. That’s why we’re better at burping and farting. That’s also why the most independent-minded lady will sit with a fashion magazine and comment with genuine interest that this is “in” and that is “out”; and the most peer-pressure-susceptible dude, even, will respond to this with a quick change of subject, and eyeball-roll, or both.

10. A beautiful woman’s hair is a wonderful thing. Fact is, very often, once it’s gone you suddenly realize you never understood how much it contributed to her overall beauty, until it was no longer there. It’s easy to underestimate this. It’s practically impossible to overestimate this.

11. Obviously, in certain situatio[n]s, pointing out #10 will lead to a dude sleeping on the couch for several nights in a row.

12. Among the misunderstood things about men, women, and the relationship between the two — MOST of the misunderstood things, arise from certain other things not being pointed out because some guy was afraid of sleeping on the couch. This is one of them.

Thatisall.

Speaking as an outside observer, I can’t understand the couch thing. Once she’s decided to train you like a dog, why would you have anything to do with her?
- Robert Mitchell Jr. | 12/16/2008 @ 19:28
“I think the selection of authorities is all wrong. When you study things like how the sexes attract each other, “researchers” are dudes, usually dudes who don’t get any”

Hear hear! I love fishing, for dinner and women, but I wouldn’t tell anyone to come to me for advice on how to catch either 🙂
- Tom The Impaler | 12/17/2008 @ 11:12
The couch thing is kind of funny. Maybe I’m alone on this, but I welcome sleeping on the couch. So does she. We both sleep better when we aren’t trying to make sure we don’t wake the other person up by rolling over, stray elbows and knees, etc. We’ll get a king sized bed someday and try to fix that little issue.
- Andy | 12/17/2008 @ 12:10
When I see a woman with “short hair” (especially off the ears)…my first thought is that she’s a lesbian, not attracted to men to start with. And not only is she a lesbian, but probably a bull-dyke, too. The kind of woman who not only isn’t interested in men sexually, but actually hates them. It goes beyond mere preference and across the border into the territory of bigotry. Ironically, such women seem to go through life dressing and acting like men…the very thing they seem to hate most. I saw a female-female couple like this at the pool hall the other day. Both had hair off the ears…and one was wearing a baseball cap, baggy jeans, and had that “guy” swagger. It was like she’d as soon have male genitalia so she could please her partner good n’ right.

Even when not taken to these extremes, I still often look at short-haired women and think that even if they aren’t lesbians, they probably have some kind of a problem with guys. (Short hair = not on the market, remember?) Every man that comes into the life of such a gal will pay for the sins of the boy who tormented her in kindergarten, her father, her brother, and of course, her first husband.

The other possibility is that she’s doing the whole “mommy haircut” thing. Several of my cousins (and one cousin-in-law) have gone for that look, all having become moms recently. It’s not becoming at all. The next step is often gaining weight and losing all interest in her husband.

THAT is what I think when I see a woman with very short hair. Course, I could be wrong.
- cylarz | 12/18/2008 @ 20:19

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Gorgeous Women, Short Hair, Sick Days and Rattling PhlegmTuesday, December 16th, 2008

Gorgeous Women, Short Hair, Sick Days and Rattling Phlegm
Tuesday, December 16th, 2008