In my earliest memory of having my hair braided, I am maybe four or five, sitting in the living room in a tiny pink kiddie chair. I am getting ready for a Ukrainian dance performance, two very tight French braids being the necessary hairstyle for that sort of thing. My mom kneels behind me, getting organized, and although she hasn’t touched me yet her methodical movements send a shiver of uneasy anticipation up my neck. She picks up a spray bottle full of water and wets my hair, and then draws the tail of a comb slowly and carefully down the centre of my scalp, parting my hair in half. Her long fingernails separate first the teeniest, tiniest hairs at my temples. A chill runs down my spine as I feel the first tug of what I know will be a long, torturous series of hair pulls. I am terrified. My lip quivers. Braiding time inevitably becomes crying time.

I hated braids first because, being little and a wimp, they hurt my head. But dancing required that I endure the torture of French braids often enough that eventually I learned to keep my loathing to myself. Later still, I had to learn to braid my own hair, which was another kind of tragedy entirely because, when you’re 10, French braiding your own hair is hard. Your arms get tired and your braids get lumpy in funny places and nothing ever looks as smooth and neat as it did when your mom was doing it for you. Braids went from frightening to frustrating, and I didn’t much like either.

Even when braiding my own hair got easier, I didn’t ever do it unless dancing required it. The idea of wearing them for fun, because they looked nice, did not occur to me - I had no love for them at all.

Then, one evening about four years ago, I came across the 1949 version of Little Women on television. Throughout the movie, Meg (played by Janet Leigh), wears half of her hair in a thick braid wrapped around her head like a headband. The rest of her hair hangs in loose curls at her shoulders. To me it looked so elegant, and so unlike the tight-enough-to-give-you-a-facelift French braids I have always known and mostly hated. Braids could be pretty. The next day I fought with my hair until I had a Meg March hairstyle of my own.

I’ve loved braids ever since. Meg March, it turns out, was just the first in a long line of characters that wearing braids allowed me to pretend to be. Braiding my hair has become my own secret game of dress-up, allowing me to feel like someone else when I am otherwise bored with regular old me. I can be Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. I can be Heidi, or one of Pride and Prejudice’s Bennet sisters, or any number of romantic and princess-like characters from centuries past. I’m not sure what it is about braids that make them feel so transformative. It might be that their first job in my life was as part of a performance, or that they seem to pull so strongly from history, appearing over and over again in different ways from century to century.

It’s true that in the past few years, braids of all styles have become very popular, and maybe even trendy – but I am okay with that. To me they seem timeless, and are so versatile that it is hard for me to find them boring. Maybe they are especially “in style” lately, but I don’t know if they’ve ever really been out – and either way, despite our troubled past, we have managed to become very good friends.

-Hailey Siracky

When my editor said she was sending me on an adventure, I have to admit, my first reaction was not excitement. I don’t know whether it was the way she emphatically punctuated her sentence with an exclamation point, or the fact that she met me outside the office, but my mind raced with all the possible situations for which “adventure” would simply be a euphemism.

Of course, like almost every situation in my life, my anxieties were for naught (honestly though, I really should get a prescription for some downers…). I ended up spending an afternoon at a tiny silkscreening studio in Parkdale being a pesky photographer and spectator. Jacob (the awesome artist who worked with us from Punchclock Printing Collective) and I exchanged a few casual niceties, and after a short time we both just did our own thing — he working quickly before the paint dried and me snapping pictures before the project was finished.

“I listen to weird music when I work,” he said without looking at me, focusing on the pink and blue pigments he was mixing. “I hope you don’t mind.”

To me it sounded like a mixture of screeching children and metal crashing, but I was not one to protest.

“No no, it’s cool. No worries,” I assured him.

The reason for my visit was to make sure that everything with our new tee-shirts went smoothly — er, have we mentioned tee-shirts yet? Designed by illustrator Chris Davenport, the tee-shirts are decidedly hard to describe — depicting a font that looks almost like human hair. They’ll be available for sale soon on our Etsy shop and at upcoming events like our Halloween Dance of the Living Dead. Also, and here’s the important part, they look great with a pair of jeans. And really, if I was a gambling woman, I’d be willing to bet that they could also double as sails should you ever find yourself stranded on the sea in an inflatable kayak you won at a work Christmas party. Just sayin’…

The other fun part of this adventure that I really wanted to share is when my editor casually mentioned that she would need me to choose the final colour. In preparation we had a discussion about purple — hues, shades, finishes, connotations even. I can say with confidence that Serah-Marie and I could now co-author Everything You Wanted To Know About Purple But Were Too Afraid To Ask. Eventually, I set off with the perfect shade of muted mauve in mind and the determination not to screw things up.

Oftentimes when a project is launched there is a great deal of waiting before the final product emerges. In this case I was lucky enough to show up on game day with the easiest job: show up, choose purple, watch someone else work. Halfway through the printing process the artist asked me if I wanted to stick around until everything was finished. At that point I had all the pictures I needed and only wanted to make arrangements for how the tee-shirts would make it to the office. When he told me that he could deliver that was all I needed to hear.

“I have to run,” I told him, “but I’ve got an adventure for you.”

-Carmen Vicente

Allan Peterkin’s One Thousand Beards: A Cultural History of Facial Hair filled my arsenal of oddball facts and trivia to bursting. I now know that there exists an actual organization called the Beard Liberation Front (an interest group that campaigns against beard discrimination), that somewhere in this world lives an enigmatic contraption called a moustache bra, and that Peter the Great of Russia made it impossible for men to wear beards unless they paid 100 rubles per year for a beard license. Truly. A beard license.

One Thousand Beards was born out of what Peterkin describes as “one of those perverse moments of inspiration.” Devoted to the who, what, when, where, and why of facial hair, it contains chapters that progress from the early history of the beard to the beard in the 20th century, with sections on everything from shaving to psychoanalysis in between. It offers something for every reader, and although the book aims to be part cultural history and part psychological investigation, it is neither at the expense of fun or entertainment.

In his introduction, Peterkin claims that while writing his book he had hoped to uncover, “the unconscious reasons we wear beards” and the statements we make with the facial hair we choose (women included – Peterkin writes an entire chapter on the feminine beard that, for me, was one of the highlights of the book). The book does address these and other tough questions about why we wear facial hair, but provides few answers. Instead, One Thousand Beards is saturated with facts, statistics and stories, giving readers the information and freedom to draw their own conclusions. While I wish there had been more space devoted to the author’s own ideas and opinions, the volume of information provided and the pace at which it’s presented tells me that any answer to these questions would require an entirely different kind of book.

One Thousand Beards gives readers the understanding that there is much, much more behind facial hair than the mere biological ability to grow it. Over time, beards have been forbidden, required, taxed, and forcibly removed, and between every man (or woman) and his (or her) facial hair lies an emotional attachment, personal belief, fashion statement, and worldview. It not only opened my mind to the stories behind facial hair, but to the potential history behind other everyday objects and items of personal style.

Quirky, did-you-know kinds of anecdotes have always filled my nerdy heart with glee. Thanks to One Thousand Beards, I can now joyfully tell people that most men will spend a total of 5 months of their lives shaving, and that hundreds of thousands of dollars of beer is wasted every year trapped in beards. And really, this is the kind of information that can only make life happier, funnier and a little bit more full. It not only freshly stocked my cache of trivia, but it opened my mind to the wealth of stories I can find in all of the places I would never have thought to look.

A few of my favourite things:
• Separate from the main text, each page has side columns devoted to facial hair facts, quotations, images and illustrations that don’t quite fit anywhere else.
• The final chapter not only contains detailed instructions on how to plan, grow, wash, dye and wax your facial hair but also contains an illustrated list of how-to’s with instructions on how to shave your facial hair into twenty distinct styles.
• The bibliography is nine pages long. Though the book itself is more of an overview than an in-depth look at facial hair, it provides tons of resources for readers interested in digging further.

One Thousand Beards: A Cultural History of Facial Hair by Allan Peterkin, Arsenal Pulp Press, 2001
reviewed by Hailey Siracky

A few weeks ago I decided (after many weeks of internal debate) to cut my ratty, peroxide-damaged hair short. Like really short.

Here’s what it looked like to begin with.

I already look like a little kid and I enjoy dressing like one, so having long uncombed hair with crooked bangs wasn’t really helping me project the maturity or togetherness that I occasionally require for things like job interviews and buying wine without getting carded (every time!). Standing around one day at work, I thought back to all the summers I had spent with thick wavy locks gathering sweat on the back of my shoulders and finally turned to my friend Tiffany who was rearranging the hangers on a rack of dresses and said, “Hey! Do you wanna cut all my hair off?”

Tiffany usually cuts my hair at her Montreal apartment. She’s a professionally trained hairstylist but became disenchanted with the salon world and went independent a few years back. “Sure! I could use some more photos for my portfolio. What do you say to doing a few different cuts along the way if I do it for free?”

Woah. Getting to try out a bunch of different hairstyles with no commitment and the whole thing would be free of charge

“My friend Liz does makeup for movies, and I’m sure she’d want some new portfolio pictures too. We could get Marilis to take the photos!” Tiffany continued. I dove straight into the bottomless sea of google image search to hunt for short haircuts and style inspirations. A week later we were sitting in Tiffany’s living room surrounded by garbage bags of clothes, chugging coffees to shake off all of our hangovers. I set up my laptop in the corner and broadcasted Day One of the Haircut/Makeover Photoshoot.

It took us five hours to cut, do makeup, style, and photograph three different outfits. We collaborated on all the looks, drawing on our professional experience and then stuff like America’s Next Top Model and icons like Twiggy, Edie Sedgwick, Agyness Deyn, and even Lady Gaga. By Day Two, we were in the swing of things and did seven different looks in about four hours. Both days felt way more like play than any kind of work and the only money exchanged was when we paid the delivery guy for Chinese food. My favourite photos are from the later looks, after I warmed up to taking photos.

I’d love to do it all again knowing what I know now and working with this awesome team, but I’ll have to wait a few years until my hair grows out again… Let us know what you think!

Makeover Team:

Tiffany Elton is originally from Newfoundland. She cuts hair out of her apartment, designs vintage-inspired clothing for her line LadyLike, does fashion illustration, and plays music.

Liz Furlong works on movies and events doing makeup with a focus on environmentally-friendly products. She recently started a holistic wedding and event planning collective called Bouquet with five other women whose skills cover catering and hospitality, custom tailoring, graphic design, event planning, photography, and of course, makeup.

Marilis Cardinal has a streetstyle and party photo website called The Pregnant Goldfish. She works for Nightlife Magazine, does freelance styling for fashion shoots, takes photos of bands, and makes delicious fluorescent cupcakes.

Tessa Smith co-runs Fixture Records, a CD-R and cassette label, and plays in the band Brave Radar. She does freelance writing for Worn and keeps a blog on tumblr.

All clothes are our own, including Supayana shoelace necklace, Preloved cowl neck sweater dress, LadyLike plaid babydoll, complexgeometries black hooded tee-shirt. Everything else is vintage.