I’m a picky guy, but only in the stupidest ways. For example: I’m picky about certain foods; macaroni and cheese for example, which I only like if it came from a box with a powdered cheese mix that you mix with a half-cup of milk and a half-cup of butter and then eat straight out of the saucepan after between 7 and 12 beers while watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I’m picky about my clothes, and yet own a blue shirt that you can see my nipples through. (And I don’t mean you can see the shape of them when it gets cold; I mean literally you can tell that I have a weird hair issue in which my right nipple is dramatically hirsute and my left nipple has a total of 3 hairs, one of which is at least 4 inches long.) I’m picky about what grosses me out, in that I can watch movies in which nuns are decapitated and spray gore onto schoolchildren, but the House episode in which a guy’s testicle exploded made me curl up into the fetal position and whimper softly for a good 10 minutes.
One thing I’m picky about is women’s hair. Mostly, hair doesn’t bother me; even if it’s bad, I usually find it very amusing, such as this fetching look, which probably cost that woman over a hundred dollars (money that would have been better spent in a money market account, saving up to have her nose reduced by 75%). But there’s one thing about women’s hair that annoys me, and it’s bangs. I don’t know why they drive me crazy, but they do. The feeling they give me is mostly “Wow, that girl has such beautiful hair, it’s too bad that she feels necessary to chop off most of the front rather than investing in a 50-cent barrette or something.”
Let me draw you some pretty pictures to show you what I mean.
This is Margaret. She’s very pretty, is she not? She spent roughly $150 getting her hair done, including removing the grays to get back to the jet-black mane she grew up with, and a set of stylish bangs that hang down just ever so slightly into her eyes. It’s all layered, and very well done. She tipped her hairstylist, Alejandro, $25. Now let’s look at her sister:
This is Molly, who has her husband Joe cut her hair with a Flowbie. She hates having hair hanging over her ears, so she just leaves it long in the back and short in the front and sides, a classic mullet.
As you can see, the only difference between having bangs and having a mullet is maybe 2 extra inches of hairline on each side. In fact, were you to tuck your hair behind your ears, there’s a good chance you’ll get embroiled in a conversation about Dale Earnhardt Junior driving for Hendrick Motorsports and whether or not this is a travesty. (Yes.)