Traditions of whom, specifically? I do a lot of reading about epilation and have never encountered any particular symbolism about this.
You are certainly lucky to live in a place where the student:teacher ratio is so good.
Around here, by law it is 22:1… but if you personally go into the schools, like I did, and count the actual students, in any comprehensive public school it’s over 30 kids per actual teacher standing up and teaching.
Because 1) the calculation is per school and not per classroom and 2) funding is skewed by headcounts and 3) every school gets a waiver every year… except, of course, the magnet and charter schools where the good ratio is part of the sell.
Fun fact, though - the poverty schools have far fewer lice outbreaks. Supposedly head lice prefer extremely clean hair and the poor have less access to showers and fancy shampoos, but I don’t know that anyone’s done real research.
Homework complete.
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Try Europe from at least the Middle Ages right up through the 1950s. One of my aunts got a pixie cut in the late 60s and all of her aunts threw fits that any woman would do that on purpose.
Albert Camus has a story in his last book about the main character’s mother getting a bob cut, in French Algeria, in the 1920s, and her own mother calling her a whore over it.
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The French have done it to (often unfairly) stigmatize women who were believed to have been excessively friendly to occupying soldiers. I seem to recall it happened after both world wars and after the Franco-Prussian war.
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Stop. Collaborate and listen. Lice is back with a new infestation.
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Wow! I had no idea.
It’s almost worth having that song stuck in my head for that comment.
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…almost
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@gadgetgirl02 @Medievalist Thanks for the examples! Without any qualifiers “traditional” and “conventional” tend to set off my weasel-word alarm.
Especially as one of my first cinematic crushes was Ilia/VGER, so my initial response to complaints about bald women is “not sure if serious…” It has often been seen as a liberating tradition within the punk and goth subcultures, for instance.
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Also swoon!
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Certainly, but the older tradition is why this is so.
The only women in Europe in the last 1,000 years until the 1950s who could un-scandalously have their hair short were nuns, and during that time period no-one would have seen them without a wimple on anyhow.
Edited for autocorrect nonsense.
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I just wanted to share with everyone that rubbing alcohol makes great bug spray. I use the 90% stuff in a squirt bottle. Some bugs require more spray than others. But I’ve killed roaches, stink bugs, house centipedes and even knocked a wasp out of the air with it. The only kind of bug I haven’t been able to kill with it has been carpenter bees, mostly I think, because they didn’t stick around long enough to get thoroughly sprayed.
The down side to using rubbing alcohol is that it doesn’t leave any poison behind so its only good for killing bugs you can directly spray. But, for me, that’s an upside, I don’t like leaving poison residue around if I can help it.
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The fact that lice in the USA are resistant isn’t news - this was info known at least 13 years ago when my kids got lice. I tried all the remedies - including oils and shampoos and combing cleansing the bedding - and any stuffed toys - etc.
Only thing that worked was a buzz cut for all three kids. Yes - people made comments about my daughters hair. It grew back. Hair is funny like that.
(Head) Lice can’t live anywhere but the hair on your head - it must be at least 1 inch long for them to do whatever - apparently - so cut shorter than that and no lice issue. When the kids hair grows back the lice are long gone - they (thankfully) don’t hibernate or hide like other bugs that are difficult to deal with do.
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I’ve read where selfies are part of the problem. Kinda makes sense.
My kids have gotten lice a few times.
“Thanks, Dad!”, enthuse @frauenfelder’s kids
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Public lice are the worst. I knew someone who got them hanging out at the Pubic Library…
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More often than what?
… than before? Because the lice are getting more resistant
… than adults? Because kids stick closer together, share caps for fund, etc. Lots more direct hair-to-hair contact.
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