Post Icon

Hair Blindness

Ever gone to the hairdressers for a completely radical, life-changing new look and found your boyfriend barely even notices? You're not alone. Liz Frost has come across a new impediment called Hair Blindness. And it would seem most men suffer from it.

 
Ever had a really radical haircut your boyfriend has completely failed to notice? I have. Back in the day, I went from waist length 80s frizz ball to shoulder-length and straight overnight.  I looked completely different and at first I could hardly recognise myself in the mirror. But as I waited self-consciously for my then boyfriend to meet me for a date and give his verdict, I needn’t have worried.  My new look went straight over his head (so to speak).

It’s not just cuts our visually challenged counterparts seem to have trouble with. My mum went from jet black to golden blond when she started turning grey and while my Dad noticed (he was paying for it after all) many of the male halves of their friends didn’t. They hung back and watched with baffled expressions as their wives leapt forth cooing over how different my mum’s hair was. I had to wonder, did these men really not see it?

I always thought it was because men in general just aren’t that interested in our hair, but when even the most drastic change goes unnoticed, you’ve got to wonder if their eyes are somehow faulty.
Well, now scientists have come up with a whole new explanation. New research conducted by Brad Duchaine, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London, hints that human brains process hairstyles distinctly from other facial features.  And just as a small proportion of people have Face Blindness (trouble recognising faces, while otherwise seeing normally), others are probably blighted with Hair Blindness. Poor lambs.
With us women changing our tresses every five minutes, whether it’s a smattering of subtle highlights, a jaunty flick at the ends or just the fact we washed it in a different shampoo that’s made it all shiny, it must be a minefield for these poor Hair Blind men.

Creator of the Dilbert comics, Scott Adams admits ‘To me, hair is either brown or it isn’t, and you either have some or you don’t. The rest is beneath my radar’
I suspect my current boyfriend is a sufferer too. In fact, his incapacity to see is so finely tuned that I can get a fringe cut without him batting an eyelid, but he will still notice a zit on my chin before I do.

But rather than suffer at the hands of his affliction, Adams has come up with a perfect solution.  ‘When you see a woman who you haven’t seen for a few weeks, you can pay her this compliment and it works every time.  Say, 'You’ve done something different with your hair.  I like it.' The woman will feel flattered that you noticed anything beyond her hair’s very existence and its degree of brownness.  She might even wonder if you can be her new gay friend.  But she will confirm that something is indeed different and offer many details about how it got there. You can use that time to think about your hobbies.'
Sneaky, but I must admit, he’s onto something. Most women have usually done something different to their hair, and if they haven’t, they’ll just think ‘what a nice man’.

I’m not sure I really believe in Hair Blindness, and as Duchaine admits 'I’d love to find them, but we haven’t heard from anybody yet.'
Still, at the end of the day, we don’t change our hair for the men in our lives, we only ever change it for ourselves. The men who care enough about us to notice the smaller things are probably just much more likely to get laid.

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • RSS

0 comments:

Post a Comment