Herr Holbrook

It's interesting what has happened since I grew back my moustache and stopped getting my hair cut. The moustache always has been polarizing, with favorable and unfavorable comments regrettably breaking down along gender lines, with women on the wrong side of the debate. Only recently, with my curls becoming more pronounced as the volume of my hair has grown, have there been any opinions on the matter of the hair which adorns my scalp. It's a considerably more complicated thing, the feedback with which I have been furnished free of charge.

There are calls for me to get my hair cut from men and women alike, but the support has been similarly cross-gender. I usually tell guys who are critical of any such thing to pound sand. I listen more carefully to women, but naturally grant the most consideration of all to those who are unattached. Men and women alike who are offering a job also get a fair hearing on the matter of my hair. I think that's all quite reasonable of me.

Apart from calls to cut the hair, there has been a recent buildup of cries asking that I straighten the hair. I worry about that. I'm like Persis Khambatta in a way. When cast as a bald woman in the first Star Trek film, she was evidently fearful of damage to her hair from the months of shaving it that would be necessary. Of course, her fears were unfounded, as that is not the way hair follicles work. I know that at least for the moment, if I cut my hair it will grow back. The day will come that my hair stops growing so well, but not yet. While I can, I want to grow it as much as I can, but I do know that cutting it will not affect it long term.

I am concerned though about what straightening it might do. What effect could that have? I'm aware of nothing which debunks that. It may be out there, but I do worry. In any case, I'm not the time that always wants to be what I'm not. People with short hair want long hair, people with long want short, and those with either curly or straight hair want the other thing. I don't think for a moment about the hair genetics gave me and the hair I might have picked on my own. What I have is good. I'm not about to spend a time or a single uncomfortable minute changing it except according to the conditions I have already outlined, so leave me be.