The End of the Hair Project

I am extremely late with this post. You, dear reader, have my apologies.

As you will recall from previous posts, my 02008 New Year's Resolution was to try my best to resist the urge to cut my hair, with the ultimate goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

With just one week left in the year, my resolve to keep my hair uncut was still intact. However, my attention was brought to Pantene's Beautiful Lengths program, with its 8 inch requirement (which was better for me than Locks of Love's 10 inches). Well, I finally reached 8 inches in June!

Here are the May 2, 02009 photos:


Three days after those photos were taken, Beth could live with my long hair no longer. She decided it was haircut day, and she gave me my shearing. The next day, I stopped in for a visit to my barber for a bit of a cleaning up. These photos show the results:


Now I feel very much less like a total doofus!

Last week, I received a letter of thanks from Beautiful Lengths. So I know that my hair reached its destination. Mission accomplished!

April Hair Photos

Happy April Fool's Day!

As you will recall from previous posts, my 02008 New Year's Resolution was to try my best to resist the urge to cut my hair, with the ultimate goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

With just one week left in the year, my resolve to keep my hair uncut was still intact. However, my attention was brought to Pantene's Beautiful Lengths program, with its 8 inch requirement (which is better for me than Locks of Love's 10 inches). I am eager to get rid of the mess on my head. So, I switched allegiance.

Here are the April 1, 02009 photos:


I did end up getting a slight trim on Monday, after Beth told me that I had split ends. This may set me back a bit, but not as much as I expected. I think I may still be on pace for a May or June shearing. I'm really looking forward to it.

March Hair Photos

As you will recall from previous posts, my 02008 New Year's Resolution was to try my best to resist the urge to cut my hair, with the ultimate goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

With just one week left in the year, my resolve to keep my hair uncut was still intact. However, my attention was brought to Pantene's Beautiful Lengths program, with its 8 inch requirement (which is better for me than Locks of Love's 10 inches). I am eager to get rid of the mess on my head. So, I switched allegiance.

Here are the March 2, 02009 photos:


I'm still desperately hoping to be able to get this all chopped off no later than May, although I'm just not certain that it will all have hit that 8 inch minimum by then.

February Hair Photos

As you will recall from previous posts, my 02008 New Year's Resolution was to try my best to resist the urge to cut my hair, with the ultimate goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

With just one week left in the year, my resolve to keep my hair uncut was still intact. However, my attention was brought to Pantene's Beautiful Lengths program, with its 8 inch requirement (which is better for me than Locks of Love's 10 inches). I am eager to get rid of the mess on my head. So, I switched allegiance.

Here are the February 2, 02009 photos:


There should be just a few more of the self portraits before this series reaches its conclusion. I fear that my hair growth may have slowed its pace. Nonetheless, I'm still desperately hoping to be able to get this all chopped off no later than May.

January Hair Photos

Welcome to 02009!

Well, I made it through all of 02008 without [much] breaking my New Year's Resolution. Sadly, a full year was not enough time to hit the target!

As you will recall from previous posts, my 02008 New Year's Resolution was to try my best to resist the urge to cut my hair, with the ultimate goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

With just one week left in the year, my resolve to keep my hair uncut was still intact. However, my attention was brought to Pantene's Beautiful Lengths program, which has an 8 inch requirement, rather than a 10 inch requirement. I've made no secret of my eagerness to get rid of the mess on my head. So, I have switched allegiance. I have no qualms about this, for at least two reasons:

• In my view, women with cancer are at least as deserving as are children with alopecia.
• I have heard that Locks of Love charges the kids for the wigs. Pantene, on the other hand, gives the wigs away.

Here are the January 2, 02009 photos:

Now it's time to come up with my New Year's Resolutions for 02009. (Yes, there will be more than one. Keep watching this space for details.)

And Happy New Year!

December Hair Photos

As you will recall from previous posts, my New Year's Resolution this year is to try my best to resist the urge to cut my hair, with the ultimate goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

Here are the December 9, 02008 photos. During November, I passed the one-year mark since my last haircut. Sometimes I feel as if my hair is actually starting to look better, almost as if it's a style rather than just a mess. But really, that's all self-delusion. The truth is: It's a mess. But at least now I can mostly keep it out of my eyes. So in that sense, it's improving.

As a best-case scenario, I may be on pace for meeting the 10-inch minimum by May of 02009. I'm really not sure that I can manage to last that long. Time will tell.

Worst...Hair...Ever! (A double shot)

As you will recall from previous posts, my New Year's Resolution this year is to try my best to resist the urge to cut my hair, with the ultimate goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

Here are the October 6, 02008 photos, followed by the November 5, 02008 photos. My apologies for posting them so late. And my apologies for how horrifying they are.

September Hair Photos

As you will recall from previous posts, my New Year's Resolution this year is to try my best to resist the urge to cut my hair, with the ultimate goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

Last week, my hair started really annoying me because it keeps getting into my eyes. Grrrrr...

Anyway, here are the September 2, 02008 photos. My apologies for posting them so late.

For those few of you who will get the reference, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror a couple of days ago while I was wearing a baseball cap. Suddenly, I'm thinking of dressing up as a member of the Baseball Furies for Halloween.

Welcome to the Seventies (August Hair Photos)

As you will recall from previous posts, my New Year's Resolution this year is to try my best to resist the urge to cut my hair, with the ultimate goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

I'm officially one of the long-haired freaky people now.



I had been getting very pessimistic about managing to get to the 10 inch minimum. I was especially worried that for the hair at the front of my head to just get long enough to reach the back of my head to join the pony tail, it would have to get to at least 13 or 14 inches! That just is not going to happen.

But I recently took another look at the Locks of Love web site and discovered this little gem:

Hair that is shaved off and not in a ponytail or braid is not usable. If shaving your head, first divide hair into multiple ponytails to cut off.

There's my salvation! Instead of having to gather all of my hair into a single pony tail, I can separate it into multiple pony tails. This gives me new hope of actually seeing this thing through.

I figure my hair is at about 5 inches now. I'm hoping that puts me on pace for getting it cut sometime in the summer of 02009. If I'm really lucky, I might be able to get it done in the late spring. That's still a very long way to go, but I think it's within reason.

July Hair Photos

As you will recall from previous posts, my New Year's Resolution this year is to try my best to resist the urge to cut my hair, with the ultimate goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

To my eye, the July pics (shot on July 1, 02008:) don't seem drastically different from the June pics. However, I have to live with this stuff on my head, and I can tell you with a great deal of certainty that my hair has, in fact, continued to grow. Anyway, here are the July photographs:

The Hair Continues Growing

It occurs to me that people who stumble upon these hair picture posts might not know what they're all about if I don't explain them with each new posting. So, for those of you who don't know, my New Year's Resolution this year is to try my best to resist the urge to cut my hair, with the ultimate goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

In just a few short months, my relationship with my hair has gone past the stage of bargaining and past the stage of forced submission. It's now at the stage where I wash it and dry it and brush it once a day to ensure that it doesn't get knotted. Beyond that, I am now allowing it to do as it sees fit. It's a big mess and it keeps getting bigger. Recently I looked in the mirror and was reminded of Andre the Giant in his heyday. Soon, I expect I will look like I ought to be on the cover of an MC5 album. Anyway, here are the June pics, shot on June 3, 02008:

May Hair Photos, Late

Here are the hair photos I shot on May 2. Sorry they're so late to be posted. I have been terribly busy, and I have been having and trying to fix some technical issues on the blog. This partially has to do with my porting of the host, and partially (I think) with a glitch in Blogger's software. Anyway, here are the photos. Enjoy. (And I aim to get the June photos up much closer to the start of the month.)

April Hair Pics

Apologies for my tardiness in posting this. I've been keeping very busy and I've been burdened by a persistent cold which has lasted all month, so far. These photos are being posted well behind schedule, but they were actually taken right on schedule (April 2). I was feeling genuinely sick on that day, so I didn't make any effort to focus the camera well or ensure proper exposure.

That does not explain the change in hair style.

What does explain the change in hair style is that sometime in March I came to the realisation that when it is long, my hair will not submit to my will. So instead of slathering in the goop to try to keep it down, I decided instead to allow it to do what it will. So basically I just towel dry and shake now. It's a different look. More wild. But somehow, I think it's a bit less ridiculous than what happens when I brush my hair.

On with the photos:



Enjoy!

Watching Hair Grow

As I mentioned in a previous post, my New Year's Resolution for 02008 is as follows:

To at least make a valiant attempt at resisting the urge to cut my hair, with the eventual goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

In the last month, my hair has definitely crossed over into the silly range. I think it's hovering on the ridiculous precipice, but I don't think it's quite crossed over. Certainly, it will have done so a month from now.

Here are the March 2, 02008 photos:



The last time I shaved was on February 1. That has nothing to do with the resolution. It has more to do with its being winter, and my having gotten through the itchy time, which is what usually keeps me from not shaving. I fully expect to shave by the end of this month. That will, of course, serve to amplify the difference between the March and April photos.

New Year's Resolution, 02008

Cracking a nut is not really an art, and therefore no one would ever dare to call together an audience and crack nuts in front of them in order to entertain them. If he does it anyway and he succeeds in his intention, then it can certainly not be a matter of nut-cracking alone. Or it is a matter of nut-cracking, but it becomes clear that we have ignored this art because we have mastered it too completely and this new nutcracker shows us its true nature for the first time, in which case it might even be useful for the effect if he were even less skilled at nut-cracking than most of us.

-Franz Kafka, as translated by Kevin Blahut
from the story Josephine, the Singer
or
The Mouse People

I made a New Year's Resolution this year, and I actually did it at the start of the year. (I made last year's resolution in June.) My resolution for 02008:

To at least make a valiant attempt at resisting the urge to cut my hair, with the eventual goal of donating it to Locks of Love.

The last time I got a haircut was in November, so my hair has already grown longer than I'm accustomed to. The last time it was long enough (or close, anyway) to meet Locks of Love's 10-inch minimum length was in August of 01990. I moved onto the Penn campus, got my student ID photo taken (now that's a funny picture!), waited until the first Saturday morning, walked to the nearest barber shop, and got a respectable hair cut. If I recall correctly, I even had the barber give me a shave. Since that day, my hair has not been significantly longer than it is now.

I am aiming to shoot a series of self-portraits on or near the first of the month, each month until I either crack under the pressure (Beth has already started pointing and laughing) or succeed in achieving my goal.

Here are the February 1, 02008 photos: