Never let a boy brush your hair

Ladies, be warned. This is a tale of follicular horror; it may bring back childhood traumas.

We are regularly told about the biological differences between the sexes and how boys and girls are instinctively raised differently on this basis. We take many experiences for granted, forgetting the opposite sex may blunder into folly due to a lack of common knowledge, uncommon to their sex.

In this instance I am, as the title suggests, referring to knowledge of hairbrushes. I realised this difference working with a group of children after a curtain call. Planning to gather the troops, I headed backstage, only to be greeted by a gaggle of girls. I asked what was wrong and a chorus of ‘she’s got a brush stuck in her hair’ arose. As the girl at the centre of the group turned around, I could see there was indeed a brush firmly stuck in her hair, with its handle clearly sticking out from the side of her head. Closer inspection revealed it wasn’t going to be a quick removal. This was no ordinary brush; this was one of those fine-bristled barrel brushes. A paddle version (one with a flat back) would probably have worked well, but because a barrel brush is round, it wraps the hair all the way around the brush. It’s the type that most girls will have experimented with and stayed well clear of for the rest of their lives. Yes ladies, one of those brushes; the kind that easily grips your hair and mats it together almost instantly; the kind you can start to brush with, stop mid stroke and it will happily stay where it is until you actively remove it - along with a clump of your hair. Well imagine if you can that someone has tried to rapidly back-brush your long, thick hair with one. Ouch.

Within moments of realising the scope of the operation, a guilt-stricken, male colleague arrived to remove the brush. During a quick-change a group of children needed to become wild and dishevelled, so back-brushing was the order of the day. My colleague had unwittingly picked up the worst possible brush and begun his task only to rapidly discover he was unable to remove it. The little girl had to go on stage and perform with it attached to her head. Then, unable to remove it before the curtain call, she stood before her parents and bowed, brush firmly affixed, tears now rolling down her face as thoughts of having to leave it there forever or having all her hair chopped off flooded into her head.

Apologising profusely and not really knowing what to do in this situation, my colleague made a sharp exit and I spent the next half an hour meticulously unravelling hair, as the stage manager pacified and distracted my patient. Her efforts were nearly in vain, as a passer-by helpfully commented “Oh dear, you’ll have to chop all that off won’t you!” Thankfully we didn’t. I worked through my quiet despair and by some small miracle managed to extricate the brush with the loss of only a couple of strands – I’m not saying she didn’t leave looking like an eighties throwback a la ‘Desperately Seeking Susan’, but she was able to leave with her hair intact and the sage advice from many a female member of staff: “conditioner, conditioner, conditioner”.

The moral of this story is: unless he’s a trained hairdresser, never let a boy brush your hair (well back-brush it).