Better than a brush

 

Using a comb is easy. It’s more easy when your hair is wet.  Other than hair, many people have no idea what many uses a comb can have.  In fact, it is one of the oldest tools for man.  

POP Qiz! Did you know that men and women in the cotton fields used combs to separate the seeds from the cotton.  The cotton gin was built on the idea of what a comb can do for production efficiency.  However great they were, cotton gins became an irony as a revolutionary discovery.  In time, men weren’t needed in the fields as much as they were before for cotton.  A historical breakthrough in design, combs weren’t just a tool for men to use in their hair.  

In the 50′s, the hair was all the rage.  To be cool, you had to have three things.  A ride (car or motor-bike), rebellion, and some damn good hair. 

Marlon Brando

 

Men with that certain crop of hair on their heads made the cut when only grease was added to it.  It’s as if superpowers were given to anyone who possessed a can of pomade and you were a square if you didn’t.  Hollywood noticed this trend and coined it as the look by using characters such as Marlon Brando, James Dean and others to portray bad boys among  musicians like Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, and Johnny Cash. Both women and men were drawn to these characters, because of the vein ways they carried themselves.  These guys, with their more than life lives, were the poster children for coolness.  Coolness begat edgy, edgy begat fear and fear begat ignorance among conservative America.  The way a man applied pomade (see next review on pomades) to his hair and with the way he stroked it through with his comb, was seen to be like someone today flashing gang signals with his hands.  “I personally carry my comb in my back right pocket, ready to put those hairs back in place that tend to stray.”  A comb is a symbol of organization for men and it starts with his hair.  If a man has hair that isn’t well put together, you can bet he lives an unstable life. 

Still today, it is the same when you use a comb to style your hair.  Even though the hair products have changed dramatically, shampoos are made from crazy ingredients like Ginseng and organic penguin urine, and curling irons are remote controlled; the small and mighty comb guided by the swift flick of the wrist has not.  Their is no evolution to being cool. 

Other uses of the comb  

  • Cotton: Used to sort seeds out of the cotton
  • Shank: Combs are outlawed in over 95% of the prison system.  They have been known to be used as shanks or make-shift weapons
  • Magic Carpets: Since 1929, there has been sightings of men in the far east flying on combs

  

    

  

 

   

 

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