Anxious and HairyJudy Wearing, Icon Books Pick up Judy Wearing’s Anxious and Hairy, and you might well wonder at its length: how did she possibly fill 300 pages with… hair? It is a credit to her diligent research, infectious curiosity and personable voice that, on finishing this exhaustive exploration into what the subtitle calls the “evolution and culture of human hair”, I was struck by how much I’d taken for granted. From the start, Wearing sets out to win over readers who might be sceptical, taking on the broad (and, arguably, often sexist) sidelining of hair to reveal a “biological wonder” touching “on virtually every aspect of humanity”.
Her own fascination dates back to her postgraduate studies at the University of Oxford, and Anxious and Hairy builds on her research into mating behaviour, especially “adaptive benefits of human hair patches”. Why did we evolve to have tufts in some places, but not others? Even now, research remains limited.
As Wearing points out: “Oddly, humans have paid more attention to the traits involved in the mating of mites and birds than the plumage of our own species.” The earliest fossil evidence of hair, she writes, dates back about 245 million years to cynodonts: warm-blooded, reptilian and the ancestors of mammals. They developed fur for insulation, but some hair follicles continued to evolve to produce milk and body odour. Homo sapiens shed their fur coats over time, but not as decisively as it seemed.
The so-called naked ape, in fact, has the same number of follicles as our primate relatives, everywhere except on the soles of our feet and palms of our hands; but they produce mostly thin, fine “vellus” hairs. The thicker, more mature hairs evolved, through sexual selection, to grow in specific locations for highly varied purposes. The hair on our head helps to regulate temperature while also offering sun protection, explaining the diversity in density, colour and curl.
Curly hair, for example, blocks more solar radiation while keeping the head cooler. In men, this balance also involves facial hair, with Wearing exploring the links between bushy beards – which would have dissuaded sexual rivals – and balding. At Oxford, Wearing ‘ambushed’ her peers with requests for samples from their ‘interesting bits’ The science behind our other furry patches is more speculative.
Underarm hair might have evolved to broadcast our particular chemical blends, aiding social communication and helping to attract genetically suitable mates, she writes. As for pubic hair, Wearing’s preferred hypothesis is that it evolved as a “cheating detector”, trapping fluids and odour, informing mate choice and communicating about sexual activity, though she stresses this is untested. Even with all the unknowns, Wearing’s evolutionary lens makes hair unexpectedly interesting.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
