hair

I was going to through my files and I found this funny essay I wrote in high school. Maybe it's not really that funny, but at the time, I thought it was hilarious. Anyway, the assignment was to write an argumentative essay then read it to the class. I, not wanting to talk about anything real, wrote the essay below encouraging people to shave their heads. The worst/funniest part of the whole thing is that everyone thought I was serious. People actually put up their hands after and asked me whether I actually wanted shave my head. Please tell me that this was quite obviously a joke. Gah. High school.

Hair

Why everyone should rid their heads of hair

If you are looking for something to encourage prejudice, destroy your health, and ravage the environment, you need not look further than the top of your own head. Whether your hair is curly, straight or wavy, whether your hair is short, long or both, whether your hair is blonde, brown, black, red, green, blue, or pink, that pile of locks on the top of your head hurts you, the people around you, and, yes, even the world. Our health, environment, and society would ultimately improve if all people in the world shaved their heads.

There are many health issues surrounding the issue of hair. Hair dye – deadly and dangerous – would no longer be needed if hair was to be removed. Recent studies have shown that hair dye can hurt the fetus in a pregnant woman and even cause cancer. Is having hair really worth this risk?

One half of all teenagers today are sleep deprived. My friend admits this problem. However, she spends one hour before going to bed washing her hair, and two hours in the morning brushing, straightening, and styling her hair. With the banishment of hair, teenagers and adults alike would have more time out of their busy schedules to catch up on those much needed hours of sleep. With this sleep, students will do better in school, road rage, which is linked to lack of sleep, will be reduced, less collisions will occur and all this with this simple action of shaving one’s head.

Having hair is also very harmful to the environment. Without hair, people would no longer have to use blow dryers, curling irons, and hair straighteners. People would no longer have to spend that extra ten minutes in the shower to wash their hair. Think of all the electricity we would save. Furthermore, once we shave our heads, we can burn the shaved hair for fuel, saving even more natural resources.

Most importantly, shaving our heads has social benefits. In many cases people are judged by their hair. We come up with unreasonable and potentially harmful stereotypes like, “Blondes are dumb,” “Redheads are saucy,” and “Brunettes are really smart.” Without hair, these stereotypes, that restrict people from judging others by their personality, would no longer be valid. Moreover, this will help already bald people. For example, male pattern baldness would no longer be a great issue and this would reduce midlife crisis depression. Chemotherapy patients, already stricken with the pain of failing health, lose their hair because of the treatment. If everyone was bald, middle-aged men and chemotherapy patients would not have to deal with the angst of social denial.

We now see how much risks we take for our useless tresses. Hair destroys our health. Hair hurts the environment and hair hurts other people. When will we finally see how much we are sacrificing for so little? It is already hard enough to get the world’s problems out of your hair, but it is impossible to get hair out of the world’s problems.

stoney creek is different than toronto

Someone told me that I was their most ethnic friend the other day. Funny, eh? Just to be clear, when I'm in Stoney Creek, I don't go around wearing traditional Korean dresses, speak with an accent, or even mention my "ethnicity". The difference? Well, it's really just Stoney Creek, where my parents were once proud convenience store owners serving hundreds of people who thought we were Chinese.

I'm not really bitter. It's just a different place, right? I remember in my first year in Toronto, I went out with a bunch of Asians and I thought to myself, "Wow. I'm the only white person here." Once, my friend and I were counting the number of white girls in my class and, lo and behold, he inadvertently counted me amongst them. So it seems like one of the great differences between Toronto and Stoney Creek is that in Toronto, I'm pretty much white and in Stoney Creek, I'm pretty much anything but.

And, again, it's not me that's changing -- It's the people around me. In both Stoney Creek and Toronto, my friends are primarily white, but in Toronto, it seems that there were so many Asians that I was free to distinguish myself, and in Stoney Creek, I'm already distinguished. I'm not saying my friends are racist or anything. I'm even sure that they have "ethnic" friends at university. It's just the environment that makes me stand out I suppose. I usually like to stand out, but instead of me sliding into the spotlight with my arms outstretched in a ta-da formation, it's more like I didn't know I was on stage and the curtain opens and people are seeing something that I didn't mean to show.

That's the grandest thing. I forget how people see me, so it always comes as a shock when someone points out that I'm Asian. I can forget that I'm not white, but some people can't.

I don't really understand the difference. Like, in Toronto, I make mildly racist jokes with my friends but usually there are other Asians there. Maybe that's the difference. Maybe it is me, being uncomfortable with my lack of back-up.

I guess I'd better get used to it. Looks like I'll be Stoney Creeking for a while.

jazz singers

I don't like Billie Holiday. I never thought her voice was something nice to listen to. I preferred the smooth voice of Ella Fitzgerald. However, I must concede that there is a rawness in the song Lover Man that Billie Holiday really pinned. Ella's version, though good and sad, doesn't beat the real pain Billie seems to get across.

A trumpeter friend of mine told me, in response to my negative opinion of Billie, that the reason why all the amazing jazz players wanted to play with her is because she didn't hold back, and she just put her all into the songs that she sang. Now, to me, sometimes that just comes across as sloppy, but then again, what the hell do I know?

Anyway, Lover Man, if you don't know, is the sad aching song about someone whose never experienced romantic love and is longing for it. The other day I showed this song to a friend in need of some wallowing, as it is often my wallowing song. I have a sort of inkling that I won't be singing Lover Man forever, but as it is, sometimes it's nice to sit and sigh.