to cut my own hair

I recommend (speaking as your attorney...) that you let your freak flag fly

You're right. Never thought about it, but it's true. Even today, older Catholic women reflexively wear hats to church. It's universal - Christians, Jews, Muslims.

There are erotic aspects to hair - especially women's hair. To me, anyway. That may be it. Maybe hair, in general, reminds some people - including, evidently, those in control of our sacred rituals - of pubic hair. Just an idea, however creepy.

In Rapunzel's Daughters: What Women's Hair Tells Us About Women's Lives, sociologist Rose Weitz proposes:

Hair is one of the first things other people notice about us - and is one of the primary ways we declare our identity to others. Both in our personal relationships and in relationships with the larger world, hair sends an immediate signal that conveys messages about our gender, age, social class, and more.

Here's the problem, though, now that the issue has been revealed: Because we're so militant and chauvinistic about all our dogmas, it won't be long before Hindus and Buddhists are slung on the wall, and forced to explain why they're not cool with the hidden-hair fetish...

I don't know what it is with the hair thing, either. But, so many cultures have hair rules and what I'd like to know is what do you do with unruly hair in the first place? I mean, if it already won't behave, some stinkin' rules made up by complete strangers ain't gonna help make yer hair become a better citizen, is it?

:o)

All I know is this: according to the edicts of my Native Am. culture, if Mr.~flowerchild~ kicks it before I do, I am supposed to unbraid my hair and leave it unbraided for a year, the period of mourning.

All I know is that it took a few centuries, but Catholic nuns finally figured out that they could stop wearing wacky headgear in imitation of female medieval and ancient dress and still maintain vows of chastity, not to mention, figure out many ways that they could dress to look extremely unattractive to not only the opposite sex but to any lesbians out there.

And also that once Catholic women stopped having to bobby pin little lace doilies on their heads to symbolically cover their evil and tempting head hair before entering a church, masses did not turn into lust festivals and most guys still seemed to be able to focus on the service.

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it
My hair

I want it long, straight, curly, fuzzy
Snaggy, shaggy, ratty, matty
Oily, greasy, fleecy
Shining, gleaming, streaming
Flaxen, waxen
Knotted, polka-dotted
Twisted, beaded, braided
Powdered, flowered, and confettied
Bangled, tangled, spangled, and spaghettied!

The really odd one I don't get is the Muslim and Orthodox Jewish male laws for covering head but letting the beard flow and grow.

And the Saddamist mustache in Iraqi regions, what the heck is that all about? Some kind of ancient tribal compromise with the "shaving is verbotin" thingie?

The strange part is that while a lot of Old Testament law/tradition, like dietary laws, at least has some folk wisdom to it, wearing full facial hair in hot lands doesn't seem to make much sense at all. I always wondered if that one originated in a political statement against those nasty shaving Romans.

I just seems to me that Americans can't let other cultures be themselves. The religious want to convert them, the secularists want to "free" them. Both seek to destroy what exists and replace it with what they believe is correct.

Zipperupus seems to explain it pretty well for me. The thing is people got the hair they get, they dont get to pre-order it. Why do societies try to control it? Because it becomes a sign. To a hippy short hair signals something, to redneck long hair signals something.To the young, gray hair signals something, it should signal a person of longevity and wisdom,but it our culture sends the wrong signal,of weakness and overness. True wisdom is to let no one decide for you how your hair should be, and decide about no one by thier hair.
SIGN
And the sign said long haired freaky people need not apply

So I tucked my hair up under my hat and I went in to ask him why

He said you look like a fine upstanding young man, I think you'll do

So I took off my hat I said imagine that, huh, me working for you

woah!

Sign Sign everywhere a sign
Blocking out the scenery breaking my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign

erotic aspects to hair

Certainly this is a large component--the "immodesty" issue, as a characterization of behavior which might give rise in the male observer to "impure thoughts", but I think there is also something deeper at work--if you look at some of the medieval renderings of saints, with the radiating spokes extending from their heads to their halos, it bespeaks a noumenal transaction.

Taking the metaphor of hair as power (Samson) and as a quasi-divine/quasi-heroic attribute, (cf. the wind-blown hair surrounding and accentuating the face (we even do it today with models and big blowers...) I want to make the case that Yahweh doesn't want anyone else to have a nice "do" but him...

You are so, like, dead

You beast!!!!

I saw Dickons thread!

First off, you have the motivation of the Jewish practice of head covering completely wrong. It's got nothing to do with "God doesn't look the way hair looks." It's more an acknowledgment that our thoughts are dirty or imperfect as well as a simple mark of cultural identification. Kabbalist Jews (hardly qualifying as "Yahwist") also use Yarmulkes/Kippahs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarmulke -- Read that

Also, most Protestant custom holds that you should remove your hat or other head coverings in church. I suppose this would conversely suggest that you want to show off your thoughts to God. That "old Catholic ladies wear hats to church" reflects generational differences more than anything.

Numerous Buddhist sects also have regulations about hair, so this is not exclusive to Abrahamic religions.