hair is not a feminist issue!

According to the Daily Mail, British women spend nearly two years of their lives on their hair:

The average British woman spends an astonishing ?36,903.75 on her hair in a lifetime, according to new research.
She will spend the equivalent of just under two YEARS of her life washing, styling, cutting, colouring, crimping and straightening her locks in salons or at home.

Two years? I doubt I’ve spent anywhere near that amount of time on my hair. The less hair I have, the less time I spend on it, and I often wish I didn’t have any, as it’s a complete nuisance getting it cut, but even more of a nuisance if I don’t. There’s no way to avoid having a haircut eat up an hour of time, and I haven’t yet reached the point where I have so little hair that I could easily cut it myself.
But as to total time I’ve spent compared to British women, let’s see how “pussified” I am.
As a boy I’d get frequent short haircuts, and as I reached my teens and twenties the intervals between haircuts lengthened substantially — as did my hair. But I soon tired of long hair and eventually went back to short hair and frequent (more or less monthly) haircuts. I think it’s safe to estimate a lifetime average of one hour a month devoted to hair, which would cover not only the time spent on haircuts, but the time spent washing, drying, combing my hair (which I’ve never enjoyed screwing around with or styling). My haircuts started when I was around two, which means I’ve spent around fifty times 12 hours on my hair. That’s 600 hours — a total of 25 days. Even if I live another 50 years and don’t go completely bald (both extremely unlikely eventualities), on my death I will have spent less than two months on my hair.
That’s two months versus two years!
The British numbers sound incredible by comparison. Do women really spend 12 hours per month working on their hair? Nearly half an hour a day? If I had to do that, I’d find it needlessly cruel and oppressive.
However, it is unfair to generalize about other men based on my personal experience. And isn’t it sexist to single out women? I mean, look at how much time John Edwards spends on his hair.
Sigh.
For me, what really eats time is not hair but traffic. I shudder to think how much time the average person spends in traffic, but I’m sure it dwarfs the time spent on hair by British women (or even men with important hair).


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3 responses to “hair is not a feminist issue!”

  1. Heffalump Avatar
    Heffalump

    Only 2 years??? They obviously have never seen my wife…:)

  2. Mick Avatar
    Mick

    A $15 set of clippers and 15 minutes every 3 weeks solves the problem nicely for me. With virtually no hair, it takes me over a year to use a whole bottle of shampoo.
    Over a lifetime thats about 10 days and $1500. Not too bad.

  3. Eric Scheie Avatar

    I still have too much hair and too much need to look well groomed. If I cut my own hair, I’m afraid I’d look moth-eaten. It’s not that big of a deal; I’m just amazed to read that people spend years on it.