Hair

The quest for straighter hair has moved from the simple mechanics of ironing to chemical relaxing and, most recently, to exotic hybrids from Japan and Brazil. Brazilian keratin treatment, which burst onto the scene a couple of years back, proved to be especially exotic. Its promise of slinky hair involved both keratin (it's a protein) and a secret active ingredient: formaldehyde. The stuff familiar to anyone who's ever dissected a frog. In an "anything for beauty" world, that wasn't necessarily viewed as a drawback.

With one high-profile haircut on the Paramount Studios lot, Vidal Sassoon vaulted to fame in Hollywood. Flown in from London, he trimmed the tresses of Mia Farrow for her role in the film "Rosemary's Baby" - a $30 haircut that he calculated cost $5,000, including airfare. The 1967 event was staged inside a makeshift "salon" in a boxing ring. The film's director, Roman Polanski, looked on as Sassoon gave the actress a pixie cut that would be copied by women the world over.

Bob Baffert and Wayne Lukas were sitting next to each other at a recent racing function when Baffert said to Lukas, "Everyone used to hate you. Now they hate me." It's as clear as a giant flowered hat, and just as ugly. At rowdy Churchill Downs today, the only thing more quietly despised than Bob Baffert will be a Breathalyzer. The 128th Kentucky Derby will feature 19 horses, 150,000 fans, and one villain. Baffert will saddle longshot War Emblem.

Though the indigenous people of the Solomon Islands all have dark skin, about 5% to 10% also have naturally blond hair - and a new study finds that the genetic quirk responsible for this is different from the one that produces blond hair in people of European ancestry. Researchers from Stanford University and colleagues collected spit samples from 43 Solomon Islanders with blond hair and 42 with the darkest hair. They scanned the DNA in all of the samples and looked for telltale differences that were linked with hair color.

Lamar Odom's voice on the phone frequently was barely above a whisper. The pain clearly registered in words that flowed in stops and starts as he delivered a soliloquy about death and the effect it has had on his psyche. The Lakers forward spoke deliberately and expressed how emotional it has been for him to deal with two recent deaths. Odom attended a funeral in New York on July 13 for his 24-year-old cousin, who Odom said was murdered. The next day, Odom was a passenger in an SUV in Queens when it collided with a motorcycle.

Los Angeles will gay anybody up. In the two months since I moved here, I've bought a yellow convertible Mini Cooper, a pair of Guess jeans and started using one of those fitness balls as my desk chair. This is a town so gay that Republicans don't even run for mayor. So when ABC Entertainment President Steve McPherson told Time magazine, in a story about the preponderance of gay TV show creators, that "if being gay makes you that talented, I'm going gay," I had to give it some serious thought.

A small wooden cabinet went up for auction on EBay. Inside were two locks of hair, one granite slab, one dried rosebud, one goblet, two wheat pennies, one candlestick and, allegedly, one "dibbuk," a kind of spirit popular in Yiddish folklore. The seller, a Missouri college student named Iosif Nietzke, described the container as a "haunted Jewish wine cabinet box" that had plagued several owners with rotten luck and a spate of bizarre paranormal stunts.

Americans spend billions on hair-care products each year, a remarkable investment for a part of the body with no real function. We clean it, nourish it and style it -- and we definitely mourn its loss. Lots of products and procedures promise to restore thinning or disappearing hair. One especially intriguing option is the HairMax LaserComb, a hand-held laser device that supposedly revives hair follicles.

Hair is nothing if not a powerful subject for African Americans. In Chris Rock's new documentary "Good Hair," which opened Friday, he sets out to explore the complexities of living with black hair. He visits beauty salons, hairstyling competitions, science labs and Indian temples. He interviews a cavalcade of celebrities, salon owners and their clients in multiple cities. Through the ages, people of all ethnicities have obsessed about hair. Ancient Romans, Assyrians, Greeks and Egyptians wore wigs; so did Marie Antoinette and Thomas Jefferson.

For most men, it's about staying competitive in a youth-focused workplace. For others, it's a need to keep up with new young wives. And for some, well, they just like the sleek black tops on those "Jersey Shore" boys. These are among the reasons stylists say that more men - including those in their late 40s and older and those at senior corporate levels - are dyeing their hair, shedding the shame that was once attached to the practice. Hair salons across the board - from inexpensive chains to ritzy Beverly Hills places - are noticing a rise in the number of men coming in for color treatments, hoping that covering the gray will help them hang onto jobs or put them on the fast-track at work.

NEW DELHI - The children didn't notice the ravens and occasional vulture circling overhead, or the stream of black ooze that flowed nearby, or the inescapable stench of decay. They were squealing over a 4-cent ride on a small, hand-powered Ferris wheel. The kids are growing up in New Delhi's 70-acre Ghazipur landfill, a post-apocalyptic world where hundreds of pickers climb a 100-foot-high trash pile daily, dodging and occasionally dying beneath belching bulldozers that reshape the putrid landscape.

It's never been easier to feel like a natural woman. The 1960s mantra about getting ourselves back to the garden now applies to an increasing number of beauty products, with some small companies literally going to the garden and farm to bring customers fresh, natural, pure and organic ingredients in their hair- and skin-care items. These products provide an alternative to more mainstream offerings, which over the last half-century have become increasingly laden with synthetics that some would rather avoid.

There are many reasons to watch NBC's marvelously funny "Parks and Recreation," but at this point I only need one: Ron Swanson. Swanson is played by Nick Offerman, an actor blessed with a deeply melodious voice and wickedly expressive eyebrows who has mastered, if not invented, the art of over-the-top understatement. But Swanson is a sum of several parts - an exquisite creation of Offerman's talent, but also of writing and directing, of hair, makeup and wardrobe. And I love him with all my heart.

Forget manufacturing employment figures and consumer confidence surveys . The state of American hair could signal how well the economic recovery is progressing. Visits to beauty salons tend to slip during downturns, as customers stretch out the periods between appointments. But once the economic outlook improves, industry experts such as Paul Mitchell hair care company founder John Paul DeJoria say, customers start flooding back into salons for more touch-ups. Beauty salon sales grew at a nearly 5.4% rate last year and in 2010, compared with a 2.3% increase in 2009, according to financial information company Sageworks.

The spat between New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez and a Santa Fe hair stylist has gotten as ugly as - dare we say it? - a lousy haircut. Earlier this week, KOB-TV ran an interview with Antonio Darden, who has cut the Republican governor's hair a handful of times. Darden, who is gay, announced he would never do so again unless Martinez dropped her opposition to gay marriage. The spectacle of the stylist's protest worked the Internet into, well, a lather. ( The story lends itself to all sorts of goofy puns.)

A year after George and Bette McFetridge adopted a troubled teenage girl, the Irvine couple contends, her behavior grew increasingly disconcerting. She neglected her grades, kept company with grown men and ran away repeatedly. On her camera, the Orange County deputy district attorney and his wife found a photograph of a pentagram, and of words written on pavement: "Torture. " "Agony. " To punish her for lying about her whereabouts, Bette McFetridge took a pair of scissors and cut off locks of the girls' hair in early 2008 — a snip for each lie. The "tough love" punishment led to an allegation of emotional abuse that a social worker deemed "inconclusive" but nevertheless landed the couple on the state's Child Abuse Central Index, where they remained for 11 months.

Shternie Lipskier's is a stylish, deep red bob with short bangs. Elana Kornfeld's is a long, dark, glossy brunette that she parts on the side. Chani Wuensch's is a lighter brunette, with auburn lowlights and graduated bangs that fall softly across her brow. Chicly dressed and ranging in age from 29 to 36, the three are discussing their hair, or more specifically their sheitels . Sheitels are the wigs that married Orthodox Jewish women of the most devout, or Hasidic, communities wear in public.

Today's office fashion tip: Conformity is in, iconoclasm is out. Workplace dress and grooming codes, written and unwritten, are growing more stringent. Businesses--from Domino's Pizza to New York taxi fleets to, most recently, the Disneyland Hotel--have cracked down on sartorial freedom, in hopes that a sharper image will translate into profits. Some workers are rebelling.

Tommy Lee of Mötley Crüe says his favorite four-letter word — OK, his second-favorite four-letter word — is "risk. " "We've always prided ourselves on being the first band to do things," the drummer adds, citing as an example his nightly solo on the hair-metal group's 2011 tour, which involved him playing while strapped into a miniature roller coaster made specifically for the stage. "That's how we do things, and we definitely take some chances. Sometimes you're biting your nails — like, 'I hope this is the right move.'" The band's latest gamble?

The company behind the popular Brazilian Blowout hair-straightening treatments will have to warn hairstylists that two of its most popular products can expose users to formaldehyde gas, according to the terms of a settlement with the California attorney general. GIB, based in North Hollywood, had advertised its products as "formaldehyde free," according to the office of Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris, which announced the settlement Monday. The state sued GIB in 2010, charging that significant levels of formaldehyde gas were emitted by the products in testing.