A botched history of hairdressing

Humans, it would seem, have always had a propensity to mess around with perfectly good and functional parts of their anatomy regardless of any apparent pointlessness or consequences of doing so.

Tattoos.  Piercings.  Victorian era women constricted their waistlines with corsets until their intestines were forced upwards to reside uncomfortably somewhere in the vicinity of their larynxes.

Today toxic injections of the Botulism organism are used to "fluff up" lips, and surplus buttock fat is sucked out to fill up natural laugh lines on faces.

Bald old men still persist in wearing expensive toupees which, even from fifty yards away, resemble dead gerbils draped across the top of their heads, while young hirsute athletes shave it all off and look like little Kojaks hellbent on a mission to acquire cranial skin cancer.

This brings us to our history tutorial for this week;

The History of Hairdressing
It is probably fortunate that luxuriant long hair only sprouts from the head, providing an unchallenged monopoly for hairdressers.
Had it been biologically otherwise, their dominance in the field might have been challenged by an assortment of other occupations such as African Underarm Hair Plaiters and Brazilian Shearers.

Be that as it may.

Ever since Eve discovered Garnier Hair Conditioner (new and improved, containing added aloe vera) on the shelf at her Garden of Eden supermarket, and Randy the caveman slicked back his locks with newly-slaughtered mammoth grease, women and men and been messing around with their hair to attract the opposite sex.
(Note;  Or same sex. This is a non-discriminatory Academy)
The first professional hairdressers were recorded in the 4th century AD, although there is much statuary evidence to suggest that hair decoration was widely practised by ancient Egyptians and Persians too.

When women of the Roman Empire had inadequate tresses they were enhanced with blonde hair shorn from captured warring tribesmen of Germanic origin.

The pinnacle of hairdressing stupidity was reached in England and Europe in the 18th century during the reign of Louis XVI (1774-92).  (refer illustration above)

French coiffeur-to-the-stars Marquis Marcel de Bonkers overindulged in champagne during a lunch at La Cafe Escargot one day after which which he went back to his salon and invented the "coiffure a la frigate", where hair was piled up resembling a monstrous rat's nest with a model warship anchored to the top with pins and combs.

The design went out of fashion following a legal class action from all the male French lovers who had suffered prow wounds to their noses and foreheads sustained during amorous adventures with women adorned with this type of hairstyle.

I am jealous of people who have hair.
In 1964 I adopted a Beatles style 'mop-top', but 47 years later there are only 17 short strands of gray hair left to remind me of that youthful magnificence. (Sorry, 16....one just dropped out while I was typing this paragraph.)

Does anyone have a recently deceased gerbil they would like to donate to a worthy cause?

The Dora Ratjen story

This little tale of intrigue involves three bastions of truth, honesty, fairness and incorruptibility.

1. Hitler and the Third Reich.
2. The International Olympic Committee.
3. Journalism and the film industry.

Agnes Zwanzger was a midwife in the little town of Erichshot in Germany during 1918. Like most midde-aged folk, her short-range eyesight was, in optomological terminology "substantially ratshit". Additionally, she'd spent the previous evening demolishing many steins of lager which had the effect of blurring her vision even more.  So, when the infant Ratjen eventually plopped out into her hands she announced "It's a girl. Halleleujah, now has anyone got some aspirin for my headache, I'm going home to sleep off this hangover."
The parents raised the child as a girl, apparently oblivious to the surplus-to-requirements sexual equipment that must have been dangling around in the breeze between her legs.

After puberty when Dora noticed that more bodily development seemed to be taking place inside her frilly pink knickers instead of where it should be happening filling up her sports bra to maximum capacity, she diverted all of her frustration into achieving athletic excellence.

The 1936 Olympic Games had been awarded to Germany before the charming part-mustachioed Mr Hitler came to power.
Mr Hitler subsequently developed a reputation for occasionally exhibiting unsportsmanlike behaviour.  He didn't like his team being beaten, especially by Jewish teams whom he liked the least of all.

So, when Gerhardt Vanker, the German athletics coach suggested
"Yo Adolph baby, Mein Fuhrer, there's this guy in the athletics training squad pretending to be a chick, how 'bout we enter him in the Olympic women's high jump"  Mr Hitler saw it as one way of preventing "any of those inferior obnoxious little Jewish girls from winning it."
Unfortunately Dora only managed 4th place in the event which displeased and disappointed both Mr Hitler and Dora herself.
She trussed up her troublesome genitalian trio even tighter, trained harder, and won the women's high jump gold medal at the 1938 European Athletics Championship with a world-record sproing of 1.67 metres.

Few people, even fellow competitors, ever suspected that Dora was not female, but no-one could pull the gender wool over the eyes of Manfred Schwass the train conductor on the Vienna to Cologne express on 21 September 1938 in which Dora was traveling.

Manfred had spent a lifetime on the trains ogling and mentally recording every set of long sexy legs, wiggling derrieres and jiggling bosoms that had ever passed by him.
He was what the legal fraternity might term an "expert witness."

When Manfred observed Dora, meticulously attired in a brocade dress and sparkling earrings, making her way towards the women's toilet, he noticed some slight discrepancies from normal feminine behaviour.
The early-morning farting, belching, groin scratching and five o'clock shadow which accompanied this girl convinced Manfred that Dora was perhaps more biologically suited to using the gentlemens toilet facilities.

He reported the matter to the police at Magdeburg, the next train station.

Dora's secrets were finally exposed.

She changed her name to Heinrich, handed back the gold medal, and thereafter lived a life of partial seclusion refusing interviews to speak about her life.  The uncorroborated story about Hitler and the Third Reich being involved in Heinrich's career first appeared in a popular magazine in 1966 and was the basis for the 2009 film "Berlin 36".

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It is most probable that the sporting conspiracy allegations are in fact not true, and that Heinrich was simply the unfortunate victim of inept parenting.
He died in 2008.

Henry VIII and all his wives

If you'd lived next door to Henry VIII in the sixteenth century there would have been an irresistible urge to make a tree-change to the distant countryside, especially if you had an eligible and attractive daughter.

It all started when Henry VII, King of England, and his missus Elizabeth of York spawned a boy-child in 1491 who went on to become one of the most inhumane monarchs in history.

Henry Senior eventually kicked the bucket in 1509 leaving space for the next young Henry, then aged 18, to plonk his expansive despotic royal arse onto the vacant Tudor Throne and call himself Henry VIII.

(There were many significant facets of the Henry VIII reign including wars against Scotland, France and the Roman Catholic Church, but today we will examine that which history has judged to be of greatest interest; his personal life.)

Henry VIII conducted himself with the sort of compassion that you might expect from Hulk Hogan after you had stomped on his leg, then rammed his head into the turnbuckle seven times before throwing him out of the ring headfirst onto the concrete floor during a wrestling match.

One Venetian diplomat at the time assessed him differently.
He wrote;  "His Majesty is the handsomest potentiate I ever set eyes on....he has an extremely fine calf to his leg..........and a long and thick neck"  etc etc.
Maybe Henry should have taken up with the diplomat, because he had an awful lot of unfortunate misunderstandings with the six women he married during his lifetime.

1. Catherine of Aragon had been married to Henry's older brother Arthur who inconveniently died in 1502,  just five months after the wedding, leaving Catherine a widow at age 17.
At this time Henry was twelve years old with just a trace of bum-fluff beginning to show on his chin and upper lip, so his Dad (Henry VII) came up with the sweetest words any twelve year old boy could ever hear.
"Son, would you like to play around with perky young Catherine and keep her occupied until I can organise a dispensation from the Pope for you to marry a widow. "

The marital union eventually took place in 1509, but the relationship subsequently went to the dogs because Catherine failed to produce a boy child.
She attempted to divert a percentage of blame for this deficiency with;  "Henry, you have been firing fusillades containing reticent and reluctant Y chromosomes so it's not my fault."
Henry was not amused, or indeed even remotely interested in genetic technicalities. His interests had been diverted in the direction of a nubile chick called Anne who he had surreptitiously appointed to the newly-created position of Auxiliary Royal Loin Comforter.

Catherine's services were terminated and Anne was promoted to the position of wife.

2. Anne Boleyn. She also fell victim to another Henry Y-deficient chromosomal offering and produced baby Elisabeth (eventually Queen Elisabeth I)
Some time after the lust had worn off, Henry found Anne to be an irritating and noisy wife who sometimes overcooked the quail eggs so he trumped up a few treason charges so that he could have her beheaded along with her brother and three other Anne-sympathisers who also irritated him occasionally.  He mumbled with great relief to his dog after it was all over; "Rover, there's nothing like a few executions to freshen up the domestic air."

3. Jane Seymour was next in line to keep Henry warm at night.
He was now desperate to produce a son and heir to the throne.

One rainy afternoon as they were enjoying a royal cuddle Jane related to him the contents of an article she'd read in the January 1536 issue of Renaissance Cleopatra Magazine that provided step by step instructions for an acrobatic sexual maneuvre that was guaranteed to result in male babies.
Precisely 40 weeks later Henry managed to celebrate the birth of Edward (later Edward VI) despite having been in pain and traction for 9 months recovering from that single night of strenuous entanglement.
Jane sadly died of complications from the childbirth which may or may not have had anything to do with all the inverted swinging from chandeliers.

4. Anne of Cleves was a sight unseen 19 year old political appointee to 46 year-old Henry's conjugal bed in an attempt to forge diplomatic and protestant links with Germany.  It turned out that she wasn't interested in forging anything on either a political, religious or personal level so he divorced her after just a few months of marriage.
At the media conference which followed he issued a short prepared statement;  "I like her not."

Out of range of microphones he later ranted to Thomas Cromwell his Chief Advisor; "Holy shit Tom, why did you recommend that I marry that ugly little scrubber? For God's sake see if you can find me some 19 year old with some bedroom experience who looks presentable enough to take out in public."
Anne was sent back from whence she came and Cromwell was beheaded later in 1540 for his errors of judgement.

5. By some uncanny coincidence just one day after The Clevester Annie had departed, Henry stumbled across the following advertisement in the personal columns of the Tudor Times.

"Catherine Howard, nineteen years of age, vastly experienced since the age of 15 with Mannox the music teacher, Dercham the Gentleman Usher to the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, and a few other dudes, seeks good times and marriage to any fat hairy unsanitary and tyrannical old King."

Henry was up for the challenge but two years later Catherine died from a  decapitation incident soon after Henry discovered a cache of her love letters to and from one randy little relative named Thomas Culpepper.

6. Catherine Parr must have approached her marital union to Henry with at least a small amount of trepidation knowing that 60% of his previous partners had died in conjugal office.
She stroked his ego, but not much more, for 4 years just passing the time until finally the old tyrant did something useful for the world by dropping dead.

Henry's Rolling Heads count;

1. Sir Thomas More
2. Cardinal John Fisher
3. Anne Boleyn, her brother, plus three gentlemen of the privy chamber.
4.Catherine Howard.
5. Thomas Cromwell.
6. Assorted opponents of his supreme edicts and the teachings of the Church of England.

Estimated number of executions during his 38-year reign;
120 per month = 50,000+

Henry died in 1547 leaving the throne to 9 year-old Edward VI who reputedly put down his toys for a moment and said; "What the hell am I supposed to do with this bloody throne?  I'm just a little orphan who wants to keep playing in my sandpile."

As usual, some opportunistic royal relative (in this case his paternal uncle Edward Seymour) moved in temporarily and continued the trend of warfare, corruption, cruelty, power and greed which was a trademark of the English Monarchy during the Renaissance Period.

The history of willow pattern plates

(Parental guidance recommended;  contains erotica and sexual references suitable for 15 year old boys.)

China pioneered the process of manufacturing superior quality porcelainware from fine white clay mixed with silicates and fired in high-temperature kilns. 
This technology remained solely in the hands of Chinese artisans until the eighteenth century AD. 

A feature of this pottery was the intricate fine-lined artwork which often depicted scenes illustrating Chinese legends.

The blue and white Willow Pattern plates became popular in the West during the 19th and early 20th century, and original specimens have become highly prized and extremely valuable collectors items.

The plate pictured above however was mass-produced in China during the 1990's. What follows is the modern day story of events which led to it's design.
 


Hu Sung Dat was the Managing Director of Jonah (Asia) Pty. Ltd.,
a company based in Beijing that imported, then processed, raw
seafood from Japan before reselling it in cans bearing the
"Nippon Whalesong" logo.

Hu's Headquarters were in an architecturally pleasing three-storey replica of an ancient Chinese pavilion located beside a landscaped garden dominated by an attractive water feature. Decorating the reception lounge in the office were some genuine artifacts dating back to the Ming Dynasty, including one purportedly owned by Emperor Yung Lo himself.

Hu's daughter, Mee Sung Dat was a precocious nineteen year-old who had the unbridled hots for her Father's secretary, the ruggedly handsome Mr Chang.

Mee Sung was bountifully endowed by Mother Nature with waist length silky black hair, an hourglass figure that according to those with intimate knowledge possessed significantly greater capacity on the top half than the bottom, and legs that went all the way up to where her femur was connected to her pelvic girdle bone.

It was these long and shapely legs that carried her today discretely up the thirty two steps in the fire-escape stairwell to the third storey office of Mr Chang, where she perched herself seductively on the corner of his desk, waiting expectantly for him to perform his daily thorough debriefing.

Chang diligently and dexterously devoted himself to this mutually rewarding ritual.
Mee Sung was the most beautiful girl in all of Beijing, but her normally radiant face today made Chang go all wobbly at the knees.
Just that very morning she'd had studs inserted in her eyelids, nostrils and lower lip and each puncture wound was still dripping tiny coagulating rivulets of blood.

Chang accordingly decided to start operations at the opposite end.
He slowly and sensually worked his way up from her nine slender toes (one had been accidentally amputated in a panda trapping mishap seven years previously) to her athletically smooth calves and thighs.

Then beyond.

Quivering uncontrollably, his hands slowly loosened the belt of her faux-leather mini-skirt revealing to him for the very first time an exotic expanse of unexplored territory interrupted only by a single tattoo in the centre of her left buttock.
One five-letter word.
An indelible and permanent memento of Mee Sung's teenage infatuation with pop singer Sting.

This was not immediately apparent to Chang because the Mandarin-speaking tattooist had misspelt the name by using a "K" as the final letter.

In this moment of temporary befuddlement Chang accidentally and unknowingly pushed the intercom button on the front of his desk which allowed Mr Hu to overhear the muffled duet of synchronous lust-fuelled heavy breathing and groaning coming from his secretary's office.

The workers at Jonah (Asia) Pty. Ltd. had all signed an Employees Contract which detailed ten misdemeanors under the clause "Inappropriate Conduct", each item of which constituted grounds for immediate termination. Misdemeanor Number 7 was;
"An employee shall NOT, during the course of his normal duty be discovered with both hands full of tits which belong to the boss's daughter."

Avoiding the large swinging sword in Mr Hu's hand also constituted an immediate incentive for Chang to speedily leap out of the office window following Mee Sung onto the nearby limb of a weeping willow tree, before sliding down the trunk and running across the old arched bridge with Mr Hu in hot slashing pursuit.
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Mr Wang was an 83 year-old bachelor who lived in an apartment across the road. He had recently bought a 35 optical-zoom camera specifically to spy on his 75 year-old spinster neighbour who was, according to Wang "still a pretty hot chick".

Witnessing the confrontation unfolding across the road on the little bridge, he immediately took a photograph which became the inspiration for all modern Willow Pattern plates.


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A somewhat older and arguably more accurate legend pertaining to Willow Pattern plates can be found here.