Soliloquy at a Stoplight.

I don’t know if it was a former-homeschooler thing, a linguistic thing, or an overly-active-imagination thing, but when I saw the sign advertising WANT VIRGIN HAIR? FAST DELIVERY?, I was convinced there was some serious shit going down.

Who is selling the hair of virgins? Who WANTS the hair of virgins? Is it any old virgin, or are we talking particular religious zealotry here? What is the virgins’ hair being used for? Implants? Decorations? Heathen rituals? Do the virgins know?!?! Is there a brothel in my neighborhood specifically for shearing the locks of young women unfamiliar with carnal relations, like some kind of anthropological, philosophical Sweeney Todd?!?! Must we save the virgins from their captivity?!?!

Anecdotal pause commencing now:

I’m reminded of the time I was around eight or nine, when I asked my mother and older brother whether or not a family friend was a virgin. I thought “virgin” was a synonym for “being single.” My mother looked disturbed by my curiosity, then explained that, uh, no, virginity does not mean simply “not married.” It wasn’t until years later that I found myself grateful that I didn’t act on my initial impulse to ask the friend directly.

Anecdotal pause complete.

Lest there be any doubt regarding how nerdy I can be, my next thought was of a part in Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days, one of my favorite books from elementary school. Phileas Fogg (I only just realized that it’s Phileas, not Phineas, and now my childhood feels like a lie.) and Jean Passepartout come across Aouda, the widow in India who’s about to be burned alive with the body of her dead husband, since obviously a woman would rather be barbecued than single. (In retrospect, my ten-year-old reading choices may have been a bit questionable.) There’s something that’s ironically and oddly similar about a virgin sacrifice and a widow sacrifice. Different sexual experience, same capitalization of female “perfection.”

Anyway, while sitting at the stoplight, utterly befuddled at the thought of a friendly, neighborhood harem of bald virgins, I decided the ad must be for some kind of ritual or spell. I mean, it did say, FAST DELIVERY?…I’d guess that if you have a pesky poltergeist or family curse, yeah, you’d probably want a fast delivery of the cure. But who uses virgin hair as an interventional remedy for ghosts?

To the Annals of Google, I came, saw, and was confused.

The first thing to pop up was “3 Bundles Brazilian Body…” and I shut the screen in horror. A brothel of Brazilian, bald virgins?! In bundles, no less?! Even more inhumane than I initially thought.

Eventually, I reopened my Google browser with great trepidation, intent on getting to the bottom of what I was sure was a horrific and bizarre crime against humanity.

I was wrong.

Apparently, virgin hair is “hair that has not been dyed, bleached, permed, straightened i.e. it’s hair that has not been chemically treated.”

Wow, what an anticlimax. Here I was, ready to get up in arms as a vigilante fighting the evils of virgin hair trafficking, only to discover that it’s just…normal hair taken from the head of a consenting person whose sexual history is irrelevant.

So, I ask: am I alone in my naïvete, thinking that unbleached hair translates to the non-consensual theft of a Brazilian virgin’s crowning glory? Or would you too have been willing to storm the brothel with me?

 

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