I'm not sure whether this is a global phenomenon, or simply a
US one, but as I have been people watching lately, this theory has been increasingly validated by everyone I see.
The older one gets, the poofier ones hair gets. Look around at the people around you, come on, now,
look! Ok, so fine, there's nobody around because you're sitting at your computer
by your lonesome. So, instead, next time you're out watch for this phenomenon, especially among older females. People younger than fifty or so tend to have generally flat hair, that lays down. No matter whether this hair is short or long, it tends to be very
flat against their head. However, now look at the hair on people who are older than that.
It's poofy! See, I told you! The older a person is, the more their hair tends to be poofy, and stand up, away from their head, instead of laying down flat conforming to their
cranium.
I've come up with a few
pet theories of my own about why hair becomes poofy when you get older.
- Global Hairstyle Conspiracy
Somewhere, hidden, is an evil crack team of Ninjas, conspiring to keep hair poofiness alive. All people in the hair cutting industry, who fail their tests to become lumberjacks, are taken through exotic rituals in which they are trained in the Deadly Poofy Art of Hair Cuttery. Thus, whenever a person of significant age gets a hair cut, the hair stylist is required, under pain of death, to make it poofy. Thus despite its dire implications for the fashion world, hair poofiness will never truly go away.
- Curmudgeon Electrical Charges
It's been scientifically proven that as you get older, you get crabbier at the world around you. As you let loose your inner vehemence at the people around you, you build up electrical charges in your cerebrum. As they build up more and more, they charge your hairs, and thus through the magic of electric repulsion, cause your hair to poof up, as if you were touching a Van de Graaf Generators at your local Science Museum.
- Poor Comb Technology
Perhaps the problem lies not in the present, but in the past, in what these people have been doing with their hair for their entire lives. As time goes on, technology improves. Look at the world of computers! Computers didn't even exist until fairly recently in the grand scheme of things. Combs and brushes have been around since the dawn of time! Thus, following the same analogy, they have seen dramatic technological improvement over the entire history of mankind. This led to the oft-quoted More's Law: The number of bristles on brushes will double every six months. Whether current micro-bristle technology will be able to push the limits of physics is unknown at this point, and hair stylists everywhere worry about the future of their craft. Thus, people who are older have used brushes that are not as adequate as the brushes of today, thus damaging their hair, and causing latent residual poofiness.
(Apologies to those who consider themselves "
old", this was meant as a humerous take on a theory well-based on carefully accumulated
statistical evidence.
*grin*)