Hairnets and Haredim

[imomus]

Yesterday Hisae was trimming her hair. When she'd finished, she collected a handful of cut black hair and showed it to me. "I could wear your hair on my head!" I said, and we started arranging her hair on top of mine. It was quite easy to tease it into styles then fix them with hair spray.



We'd decided to go to lunch at Imren, a devoutly Muslim kebab restaurant near our house. I found that my borrowed black hair looked better when held in place by a hat, but the final effect was uncannily Hasidic. The impression was enhanced by forecurls and strings hanging off my trousers (yachting pants that tie up at various places on the leg). I found myself adopting a walk to match the look: the "Williamsburg Bridge Walk" -- stooped forward with concave shoulders, looking neither left nor right, hurrying anxiously to my destination. I got some long, strange looks at Imren -- the kind of place where, on Fridays, the staff chant "Allah, Allah" as they carve at the meat wheel.

Later, I went to Olly Prestele's new Cocolo ramen restaurant (now open daily at Gippstrasse 3 in Mitte) with neighbours Lina and Jan. At Lina's birthday party in a bar nearby I met about ten people I'd never met before. They took me, black hair and all, at face value, as we all tend to do (after all, you don't tug a stranger's beard to see if it's real). I asked a Canadian girl called Lee if she'd noticed anything strange about my hair -- confessing that it actually belonged to my girlfriend. "Now you mention it, I did think you might be wearing a hairnet," she said. "But I assumed that hairnets were just the latest trendy thing around here."

Comments

Re: miscegenation

[(Anonymous)]

There's a difference between a double standard and different context. Cultural diversification does the West a lot more good than it would do Bhutan.

As for Native Americans - they were the victims of the largest genocide ever carried out, and didn't receive their own state, or see their oppressors punished. Maybe you Yanks should just leave them the fuck alone now.

Re: miscegenation

[bricology.livejournal.com]

Cultural diversification does the West a lot more good than it would do Bhutan.

I'd like to see you explain how, and how the same principle wouldn't've applied to any European nation 100 years ago.

As for the Native Americans -- I don't believe I've ever oppressed any of them, so please direct your spleen elsewhere.

Re: miscegenation

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

you are shit. i can smell it.

Re: miscegenation

[bricology.livejournal.com]

Devastating rebuttal, there. Care to have a go at explaining how "'cultural diversification' does the West a lot more good than it would do Bhutan", and why the cultural identity of any European nation is somehow less worthy of preserving than say, that of the cultural identity of Bhutan, Tibet, the Kung or any Native American tribe?

Re: miscegenation

[(Anonymous)]

You weren't around 100 years ago to oppress Native Americans, I wasn't around 100 years ago to complain about European imperial powers "diversifing" the culture of their hinterland.

Re: miscegenation

[bricology.livejournal.com]

No, but the crux of it is what goes on today. How is it any less "culturally diversifying" to put McDonalds and Starbucks in Bhutan than it is to put halal butchers in London or mosques in Paris?