The Zotmeister - January 3rd, 2005

02:23 pm - Denotation

My last entry was about my phobia - my unexplainable detest. This entry is about my philia - my unexplainable desire. It is a lot easier to live with, I can assure you, but it does lead to some bloody awkward situations. Many know this about me already, but some of my newer acquaintances may not yet have gotten the memo. It may be easier for me to discuss than my previous topics, but may well be harder for you to read.

Trying to come up with a name for it has been a challenge. It's not that the name is difficult to derive - it's that the most obvious term is taken! I am not fond of hairy bodies, but that is the connotation that the term 'trichophilia' has assumed. Greek apparently has a lot of terms for 'hair' - I guess what I need is someone with knowledge of the connotations of those terms to help me find the right one for what I wish to express. I know the 日本語 term for what I seek is 髪の毛, but that's the wrong language♥

It is of course necessary for me to provide a denotation of what I wish to express if anyone is to determine a connotatively accurate term. Not to mention that the primary topic of this journal entry is my fetish, not my searching for a name for it♥

I like a beautiful head of hair on a woman. I am as attracted to women's hair as the stereotypical man is attracted to women's bosoms, legs, and derrières - none of which hold much appeal to me at all. Most everything I find attractive on a woman is attached to the head: the eyes, the lips, the general shape of the face, and, most significantly, the head of hair.

Just as others tend to judge bosoms, legs, and butts by various attributes - such as shape, size, length, texture, and the like - I also have varying valuations of hair. It's not just any assortment of follicles that attracts me. So what makes a good head of hair to my tastes? I'll give you a list, but most of them revolve around a single concept that most all of my desires share - purity:

- I definitely prefer straight hair to curls. Hair should flow, not be tightly wound. Perms are a definite strike - they are deliberately inflicted, and as such are worse than naturally curly hair.

- For the same reason, I don't mind the occasional ponytail, and find midtails rather cute personally, but plaits are a little disappointing, and anything further restrictive than that just seems stupid to me.

- I don't care what color it is, but I do find it preferable when it picks one color and sticks to it. Dark roots, uneven graying, and white streaks result in attention being drawn from the head of hair as a whole and being given to these "imperfections". It's not a total turn-off, but it is a factor.

- I don't necessarily find shiny hair any more or less attractive than dull hair, but I can tell the difference between clean and unwashed hair - it's extraordinarily easy to discern the difference in my own hair, given how it actually changes color when it's dirty (it gets darker) and feels far worse to the touch. I definitely prefer clean to dirty.

- I hate frizzies and tangles. Smooth hair, preferably sleek and/or brushed, is best.

- No hairspray; if it can't move freely, it's not acting like hair and doesn't look like hair to me.

- The concept of dyed hair offends my sensibilities. I'd rather see the real discolorations than the fake one covering every strand. That's just abominable.

- Quality is far more important than quantity, but if the quality minimums are met, bring on the quantity! Assuming it's otherwise attractive hair, I vastly prefer long hair to short (the longer the better, even to the floor or longer) and voluminous hair to flat (although something afro-sized would likely seem too cartoonish, so there's a theoretical limit on volume, unlike length). My dream head-of-hair is one I could use as a very comfortable full-body-covering blanket.

How much pleasure do I derive from hair? Let's just say that what the typical video from a rental store with no front door does for most people, the typical shampoo commercial does for me. I don't want Bond girls - I want Pantene promoters. Sadly, the Beauty In Advertizing website no longer exists - for me, it was far more valuable to me than any other eye-candy site, and it didn't charge a subscription fee.

How far have I carried this desire? Well, I have a Terms of Service agreement here at LiveJournal I must be cautious not to violate, but let me lead you to the ballpark: I am a virgin. I say that without pride or remorse. I can honestly say that the inside of a woman's body is something I have not visited, in any sense, since my birth. However... well, the word 'however' alone should be enough to imply what I have done, given the context of this journal entry. My one and only former girlfriend is the only partner I've had in that, although we did it often - often enough to experiment with different positions and different styles. I still find it hard to believe that I've ever done it, as though it was all one glorious dream, but I know it is true, and I long for it again.

For the record, she liked it. She said she enjoyed the motion. She offered it to me on a few occasions, once without even saying a word. After we broke up, she claimed that it felt impersonal, but I believe that had more to do with the relationship as a whole rather than the actual act, and I'd like to think she'd agree.

I do have to introduce a dark note here, though. You did read my previous journal entry, right? Well, there is a torture my kosmemophobia inflicts on me that I wasn't able to fully convey until this entry: Consider the proximity of necklaces and hair. For many, if not most, women, they fall on the same neck. They touch each other. Nothing disappoints me more than seeing an otherwise glorious head of hair being poisoned by the jewelry it is concealing. It is something that hurts me at a very deep level and yet that I am confronted with daily. Considering the comment from the apiphobic avenger314 on my last entry gives me a metaphor for this: Imagine biting into the most delicious, richest piece of chocolate you've ever experienced, only to discover that there's a hollow cavity inside containing a live bee; that should give you the gist of how this makes me feel, especially if you're deathly afraid of bees. Running my hands through a woman's beautiful head of hair and touching a necklace beneath it would be equivalent to swallowing that piece of chocolate whole and, while savoring it, having the bee escape and sting the inside of your throat. This is the sort of thing that frightens me so much, my mind refuses to have nightmares about it - I'd probably never wake up if I did. My dreams, good or bad, never involve jewelry. But I digress.

Now here's the clincher, the part that I can't fully explain. There would seem to be a paradox in my fetish. As noted, I like pure hair. So why in the name of sanity am I so attracted to wigs? They typically aren't real hair, and when they are they're not living hair. They are adornments. Obfuscators. Charlatans. They are manufactured entities. If I were with a woman and discovered that she had kept from me that the "hair" I see on her is a wig, I'd feel betrayed. So why do I feel not apprehension but rather lecherousness when I see a wig on a stand?

I have a theory, but it is only a theory. It seems to make sense to me on some curious fundamental level, so perhaps it's the proper answer. Although I detest jewelry, and am otherwise disposed against other disfigurations of the body (such as tattoos, piercings, hairdyeing, perms, haircuts...), I have no problem whatsoever with cybernetics. I'd be first in line to replace my heart with a far more reliable artificial blood-pumping engine if one were ever offered. Give me the metal skeleton, the positronic "brain booster", the spinal surge protector. I find a curious natural purity in most all things electronic in nature. This would no doubt carry over into robotics. To appear naturally human, a robot should have artificial hair. But isn't that what a wig is?

I think that's how my mind is resolving this: wigs possess purity BECAUSE they are manufactured entities, not in spite of it! It's the wearing of a wig by a person that bugs me, not the wig itself. On a mannequin, it's fine. A wig made of real hair would actually be impure in that sense, but obviously pure in another. I would never ever want a woman to replace her natural hair with an artificial substitute - it can't compete with the real thing - but artificial hair itself is not intrinsically impure to me. In fact, I envision early humanoid robots would have static artificial hair - wigs, essentially - but that later models could have nanite-based hair, which would actually grow... and perhaps even be prehensile! Talk about a dream come true...

Or maybe I'm just insane. Well, as usual, I leave you to draw your own conclusion, and invite you to comment about it. - ZM