Hair Rats And You

I have achieved real, ultimate, hair height! Here's a picture of me, channeling my beloved Priscilla Presley, before having some people over to watch Bringing Up Baby on the screen in front of which I'm standing. The sanguine, satisfied look on my face in the picture to the right, as well as the "Oh, yes! Who me?" look on the left, comes from the knowledge that after twenty six years on this planet, my hairdo is actually nearing the height to which it aspires! A couple more test runs, and I am joining a B-52s cover band.

Do you know the power of the hair rat? Both of these hairstyles! Attainable!


(Source, source)
Now, it initially sounded weird to me in a Victorian-short-story-sign-of-madness (along with keeping dead flies in a jar or scraping wallpaper off with your bare hands) to harness the power of the hair that collects in the back of your brush towards a higher use. Some people in the comments on this tutorial (one of the better explanations of WHY someone would use real hair to prop up real hair) straight disavowed the practice altogether. "Interesting article on how things used to be done, but I am one of those people who find using my old shedded hair for a rat simply disgusting. Ew." I'm telling you, from someone who has tried bump-it's, foam pieces, and everything else under the sun, using your own hair is the way to go. The color's perfectly matched, so if it shows through a little from under the section you've used to camouflage it, so what?

Materials needed: Lots of bobby pins, a good brush, lots of hair, and patience.



Steps:

1. Collect hair from hair brushes over a period of several weeks. Try not to look and or feel like a complete lunatic while amassing balls of hair in a plastic sandwich bag in your bathroom closet. Explain to significant other or housemates in simplest terms possible so they're not in for a shock while looking for towels.
   
2. Once you have a good sized supply, take a comb and roll/comb pieces into a round, sausage sized pieces. Yes, this will also look weird. At this point, you can either wrap the rat in a small, same color as your hair hairnet, or leave it as is. You have to take it out more delicately sans net.
3. Pin rat to head. [best sentence in the history of the world]
4. Pin hair around rat, using hairspray to create a helmet-like beehive covering. You want this to look as smooth as possible, and to be relatively secure so that you don't bend over to pick something up and the whole thing falls to the wayside.
5. At this point, you can either add a scarf tied around a few times for the straight up beehive, or leave a section down in a ponytail for the Priscilla look like I went for above.

I've got a lot of hair teasing and trial and error-ing to go, but I'm pretty pleased with the initial results!

What about you? Do you have any beehive or hair styling secrets? Would you make your own rat like I did, or does the idea of having old hair pinned to your head, even in the service of historically accurate hair, just gross you out too bad? Do tell!

Til next time.

(Source, source)