Give your baby a pointy head

It’s nice to be different, er, I think

I GET THE WEIRDEST JOBS. I was asked to go comfort a man who was going bald.

“For some reason, he’s really upset,” our mutual friend told me. “Go show him that having a head like bowling ball can be a positive thing. It gives the rest of us a good laugh.” (So sensitive, my friends.)

I obediently turned up at the address given to find a young man with a huge head of hair. Closer examination showed that he had used some sort of miniature garden fork to fluff up his thin, disappearing locks. He looked like he had a small personal raincloud round his head.

“You don’t have to worry,” I lied. “Women love baldies and babes fall at my feet on a daily basis.”

He looked me up and down and gave me a Yeah Right look. He refused to be comforted and eventually revealed why he was so upset. “I have a terrible secret,” he said. “My head is a really weird shape.”

I examined it carefully. He was right. It stuck out at the back. “I see what you mean. Without your hair you’d look like something from Alien Versus Predator. But that’s not so bad. Aliens are cool in their own way,” I told him.

“Not to girls,” he responded. I had to admit he had a point there. He blamed his mother for the problem.

A large number of parents in China and in south Asia spend hours every week shaping their babies’ heads to make them perfectly globular. Some use molds. (Power tools are not recommended.) “My mother obviously skipped this,” he lamented bitterly.

I decided to trawl for information from the smartest network of people on the planet: readers. Jason Sydun said you can change your head shape, but only if you are an infant: “With the right manipulation, you can shape the top of the baby's head, make it rounder or pointier.”

A doctor who did not want her name mentioned said babies who always sleep on the same part of their heads get a flat section. I imagine this can be useful in later life for balancing trays or leaning against walls.

Ancient writer Hippocrates said the fashion 2,400 years ago was to lengthen the heads of boys and flatten those of girls. It struck me that this would be a good tradition to revive in Singapore, where brainy-looking women scare off men.

Not only heads are reshaped. In mainland China, parents press their babies’ noses to make them flat, while in the Indian subcontinent, they do the opposite.

Reader Farah Huq from Bangladesh said: “When I was young, my mom used to pull on my nose religiously every day, so that it would become sharp and defined like my Dad’s.” But her nose turned out rounded and cute like her mother’s.

Reader Christy Chiang asked: “Is it technically possible to shape a baby's head into a square by wrapping it in a square mold? Is that what happened to SpongeBob Squarepants?” Luckily, Christy doesn't have any children to experiment on, but I shall keep her email to warn any prospective husbands about her interest in producing children with cuboid heads. Or I may introduce her to my balding friend. If you can’t have block-headed kids, Christy, how would you fancy a cute brood of aliens?

Comments

[farah]

over here we got all this baby shops where they have pillows of various sizes and shapes with a circular hollow in the middle. that gives the baby's head it's shape.
maybe you can tell your friend to look for a moulded pillow to see if he can still make his head round or bang his head with a hammer maybe??

[Christy]

My friend saw this and said, "You're evil and he knows it." :( She also recommended breeding kids with heart-shaped heads, as there ARE heart-shaped watermelons.

Hmmm, interesting experiment... I should start boyfriend-hunting RIGHT NOW.

Btw, I recently met someone named Israel at university. He is Chinese and plans to study Arabic, for which the professor is Egyptian.

[Nury]

He sounds like a mixed-up kid, Christy.

He reminds me of the story of Princess Diana:
"An English princess with an Egyptian boyfriend crashes in a French tunnel in a German car with a Dutch engine driven by a Belgian drunk on Scottish whisky followed by Italian Paparazzi on Japanese motorcycles."

[sej]

Isn't there a Chinese saying, of something along the lines of...

9 out of 10 bald men are rich

I'm sure one of my Chinese friends gave that to me once...

Farah, I think your latest photo just confirmed what everyone already thought.

And Christy, just remember animal testing is frowned upon these days - but then, who am I to judge?

[Christy]

Sej, I know that saying! But somehow every man I heard uttering that is the odd one out......Nury, are you rich?

Animal testing...LOL!!! But, sadly, I still do not have a partner in crime/experiment.

Nury, I'll make sure I pass that story onto Israel. :)

[Vince A]

Our early ancestors did have a weird predilection for reshaping their anatomies.

I recall an article about it in the Notional Geographic magazine.

For example, the Chinese used to make their daughters wear snug-fitting shoes that are never taken off, so that the daughters grow up as adults with really small and dainty feet. Albeit smelly feet.

Then there was a Burmese tribe that stacked narrow rings around their children's necks so they grow up with
foot-long necks that went forever.

Other tribes stretched their earlobes so wide so you could insert your whole face through it.

Then there are the documented stories about primitive people who lifted hundreds of kilos of steel every day to produce massive pectorals, and pulled themselves up day-in day-out to V-shape their backs.

Even others performed folding contortions to shape their abdomens into 6 fist-sized rocks.

A technically proficient tribe in the west practised insertion of hollow tubes into their abdomens to pump out
fat by the tubload. Their women, desirous of being buxom, underwent painful slicing and then storage of plastic bags into their bosoms.

Many other tribes spent their days executing ritual dances and strange movements, appealing to the gods to gift them with tight buns, defined triceps, and shapely biceps.

At least one lowland tribe practiced regular shunning of food for days, in sacrifice that the gods would shape them like walking sticks. The most zealous would induce themselves to throw up food in secret, not wanting to appear too pious.

Our ancients even had a proclivity for mathematical ratios: chest to waist, waist to hips, height to chest, and so forth. They reputedly came up with a first approximation of the Golden ratio (1.6), with 36/24 (from 36-24-36).

Yep, our ancestors were a strange bunch. We should be thankful to be born in the modern digital era free from such oddities.

[sej]

Christy: I somehow don't think you'd have to try too hard to find a volunteer. I sense a few candidates even within this community, not to mention those who are willing to secure volunteers for you.

Vince A: You've forgotten a very important group. Those who succumb to the promises made in your spam: "enlarge your member", "satisfy your lover", etc., etc., etc... not to mention those who chose a chemical shortcut.

[Leo]

I sure know 1 FRIEND who is soon to be BALD and VERY RICH!!!!

I don't mind introducing him into the community, but he just hates to admit that he is bald!

[Vince A]

sej, i was tempted, but wanted to remain rated G :-)

I was surprised to come up with a close approximation of the Golden Ratio via (36 + 24) / 36 = 1.66 (I wonder if they are really related).

[Rika]

Gruesome: Chinese foot binding - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding

To create a nice head shape my grandma used to put her children, and me, on a different side to sleep each night supported by a pillow in the back to keep us from moving - can't say if it worked, though. But since sleeping on the back is said to reduce the risk of cot death there are a lot of flat headed kids around... well, better ugly than dead, I reckon!

[TS]

Vince A,
All those things are not in the past, they are still being practised.
It's a wonderful world.

http://tinyurl.com/mxwkun

http://tinyurl.com/lxwxcu

http://tinyurl.com/nor8yc

[Nury]

TS, I'm sure Vince knows they are still practiced; his article is written from the point of view of the far future.
The Vinster's comment/ mini-essay above is really clever. He lists all the horrible things that people do to their bodies, moving from things that most of us think weird and extreme and then going on to what we "modern" people do to ourselves -- which is also weird and extreme!

And Vince, if you really have found a new example of the golden mean (the number 1/1.66, a number made famous by The Da Vinci Code novel) it's a great discovery!

[fardel]

Hi Nury
could you stop putting new pictures of Farah?
some of you readers have a heart problem, and some readeresses have an ego problem! (°_°)

[farah]

:D

i loved the Da Vinci code because of the numerology and how it relates to everything. plus the ancient religious believes portayed was so fascinating. but the movie completely butchered the book.

i think will go and read Vinci Code one more time.

[TS]

Ah I see, I was just skimming through today. It was a bit unusual that Vince would missfire like that, my bad Vince.

[sej]

Fardel, speak for yourself!! :-)

[dul]

I've read that bald headed men have higher sex drive and by polls women do not especially prefer non-balding men..:-D you should point that out to your friend nury!

my mother didn't fix my nose when I was small and now everyone tells me I have a "kaum nose. a "kaum" is a weird shaped Sri Lankan sweet and being called that is no way a compliment lol
(but im proud of my nose! lol!)

[Uli]

We are not going to shape our baby boy's head in any way as it is naturally now. BTW, this could result in serious brain damage if the brain can't grow the way it is supposed to be (or wants), can't it?

[Momo]

Wouldn't it make it hard to sleep on your back? Or in any direction for that matter if you had an oddly-shaped head? 0_o

[headbands]

I guess this is a cue for me to make sure that my baby sleeps on both sides of her head so it wouldn't appear odd when she grows up.

[valerielovesherhair]

It sounds as if your friend with the alien shaped head may be a product of natural childbirth and vacuum extraction gone bad. Not that I chose to give birth via c-section three times, but I have to admit my babies were all born with perfectly proportioned little heads. :)