Ten hairstyles that shouldn’t be on a human head

What’s your hair like? And how does it affect your life? Does it just hang about your shoulders and behind your ears, never really bothering you? Or do you think and plan your life around it?

Because I do. Do you?

How many hours a week do you spend managing your hair? If you’re a woman, I bet it’s hours. Washing, drying, treating, brushing, straightening, curling, crying into your crimper. And even if you’re blessed with salonesque hair (my worst kind of person) you still have to visit said salon every few weeks to get the greys treated and the dry ends chopped off. (And whippersnappers; if you don’t have greys yet, you will. You just wait).

If you’re a man, I bet it’s hours too. Because men with short hair spend ages, smoothing it down and setting it with greasy curd. And men with long hair spend ages blowdrying it. Fact!

I started thinking about this today when I was sitting in traffic, pulled up right beside a hair dressers. Through the door I could see a woman who was, as you are fully allowed do, fondling her head after getting the gruaig done.

It was one of those all poofed up but dead straight dos, lashes of hair extensions built into the head. It was a kinda glossy grape colour. Like the purple you used to put on your lips in the 90s.

I thought, oh, is that what’s in now? Because, [get our your violins]: being a busy mommy and using all my valuable childcare time for important things like working and attending compulsory weddings, I haven’t been able to go to the hairdressers in months. I’ve been dying it at home. And it shows.

It also means I haven’t the foggiest about what fashion hair is going through at the moment. So your ones’ pointing up in the air, like you just brushed over a tiny plant pot on your head hair do was a bit of new one on me.

And sure THEN I started thinking about all the crazy hair dos we’ve gone through in the past decades and millenia. The theme I feel has always been – what is the most difficult for your follicles to achieve? Right – we’ll go with that!

The fashion world creates these impossibilities so that we must go and get our hair done. I should be grey by now. I’m half an aul wan. I shouldn’t have glossy lashings of hair. It’s been pulled out by the baby.

So to prove this point, here are ten hair dos that shouldn’t be on a human head. It’ll make you feel better about your own limp locks. With sparkly bits.

1.Mouse in the House

Poor Marie Antoinette. How did they find a guillotine big enough? Imagine having to go round with this on your head. Yes, it’s mostly a wig, but still, mice really did live in them. And they smelled. Probably the worst of the top ten.

2. Have you any spare butter for my hair?

In the 1920s it was fashionable to slap bang all your hair to your scalp and cement it there. I’ve had bad hair days, but blimmin heck – send some Timotei her way. I love that this lady added a few bits through which she could blow bubbles. Genius.

3. Finger. Plug socket. Result.

I’m conscious of people who have genuinely curly hair, because I know curly heads go through their own hair traumas. But the 80s perm. Christos. All those chemicals to create the bush effect. Let’s pray this one stays back there with the pedal pushers and neon lipsticks. Wait a second…

4. Farrah Fawcett

It’s not natural. No one should walk around looking like they have a wind machine ahead of their face. It’s just not right. So even though I went through a phase of burning my hair sideways in the early 2000s, again, let’s hope this beauty never comes back. Too beautiful.

5. Poke-her straight

Glossy. Blond. Straight. I still try to get my hair to look this – even though the fashion stakes have moved on. It says health. It says vitality. It whispers GOOD ENOUGH FOR BRAD PITT. Oh Jennifer, I love you and I love your hair. But God gave me badger hair. You could grate cheese on it. And so forever more I will spend many hours a week running hot metal over my strands and spraying glossy shit over my head. Sigh.

6. Cheryl Cole Fernandy ma bobby

Beautiful. Like get sick in my mouth beautiful. Beyond gorgeous. But fake as fook. No one has hair like this (except the hair anomalies as discussed above) and so as you stare at your dank pieces of krud in the mirror and think – HOW can I get my hair to look like this – the answer is simple. Extensions. A good hairdresser. And money.

7. Roly poly

I love the vintage look. But have you ever tried to recreate it? I even have these roundy things that you’re supposed to wrap your hair around. Every time I wear them I look like I just glanced up at someone and caught a flying fig roll to the head. Again, only repeatable by hairdressers and people with very talented hands. C’est ne pas moi.

8. Pog mo gruaig

Ringlets, lovely ringlets. My Mam used to put these in my hair and I loved how they bounced on your head. So too do Irish dancers obviously which is why they stick 17,000 of them on their heads. If you look at the above picture and squint your eyes, don’t you think it looks like Marie Antoinette? See where I’m going here? Yes, ridiculous hair.

9. Bee jaysus

I swear beehives were invented in the 60s as just another place to hide the drugs. They’re class. But impossible to do yourself. I’ve tried. And like my lady who inspired this whole article at the very start, the only way to go is def – plant pot on the head.

10. The mullet

I will leave you with this. Because, obviously, there are no words.

What was the worst hair do you ever had? Mine was when my mother decided to be a hairdresser for the day and lobbed half my hair off with the blunt kitchen scissors. We had to make an appointment the next day to ‘fix it’. There was no fixing it. There was only growing it out, then fixing it. Does getting your hair done make you feel good? Or do you think we are slaves to a beauty industry?