too much typing—since 2003

3.17.2005

it doesn't matter - someone else will come along and move it

Here's today's wacko theory. Full disclosure: most often, I've parted my hair on my right - but in the last few years, with a shorter haircut, I've kinda switched back and forth. I haven't noticed women swooning at me and men wanting to be me (or vice versa) in any greater incidence on days when I part it on the left. And of course the theory utterly fails to take account of the main reason why I (for example) parted my hair on the right all those years: my hair naturally just goes that way. This may mean, of course, that I am naturally a nerd.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Really, it's just a complicated game.

I've always either not parted my hair or parted it down the middle. Which is why I'm so trustworthy.

Okay, I'm embarrassed to admit I don't know which way is "parted on the left" and which is "parted on the right". Does parted on the left mean that most of the hair is on the left, or that the actual part (line) is on the left? I'm guessing the latter...

--Flasshe

Alan said...

On the left,
On the right,
Part it up, Part it up,
It's all right.

Now that I have that out of my system. Interesting article, but I think the hypothesis is weakened by (apparently) not acknowledging that the distribution of left/right parts is within a few percentage points of the distribution of lefthandedness in the population. I can still remember learning to part my hair, and it was a lot easier as a small child with relatively undeveloped fine motor control to part on the left with my right hand, something which I will now unscientifically project onto the population as a whole. I've been a member of the comb it straight back and pray school for a while now, so it's all academic to me at this point. However, it would be an interesting sociological experiment to make conscious changes to your part, while consciously portraying certain personality traits with each style, and then gauge whether people respond differently when your hair is different, but you haven't demonstrated the traits associated with that hairstyle yet (If that makes sense?).

Anonymous said...

If I'm parting my hair on the left (which I assume means I'm putting the part on MY left side), but the guide I'm using is the reversed image in the mirror, am I actually unconsciously trying to give myself a right part? This makes some sense if you assume that you associate the image in the mirror with your "true self" more than the correctly orientated photo images, which seem "wrong" somehow. If I were trying to imitate the left part I saw in others it wouldn't look correct in the mirror unless I actually parted it on the right, yes? But if this were true for me, it'd also probably be true for others, so they'd likely be parting on the right to get what they thought was the "left part" look. Or vice versa, I'm confusing myself already.

I agree more with the other theories suggested here. I have a clockwise sworl (looking down from above), so it just naturally parts in that direction, and I'm right handed, too, so it's easier to comb it from the left.

E.