Unruly Hair Research Articles

A girl with unruly locks: molecular genetics makes a diagnosis of uncombable hair syndrome

A 3-year-old girl was referred to the dermatology department with blonde, straw-like, and unruly hair. The child's parents reported that since birth her hair had been sparse and slow growing. And from about one year of age, her parents had difficulty combing her hair.

An Annotated Homecoming

There are the Alps. What is there to say about them? They don’t make sense. (‘On the Fly-Leaf of Pound’s Cantos’, p. 117) The key poets of British modernism are united in being unique examples of the great British eccentric. David Jones, the Blakean artist-poet, invented at least one new form (‘painted inscription’) through his diverse cross-discipline practice. Hugh MacDiarmid, who once fell from a bus and was apparently saved only by his unruly hair,1 defined his job as ‘erupt[ing] like a volcano, emitting not only flame, but a lot of rubbish’.2 Basil Bunting (1900–85), who once joined a paid mob outside his Tehran hotel shouting ‘Death to Mr Bunting!’,3 earned his bread as a journalist, diplomat, spy, and sailor, but seldom as a poet. All three poets have, like Ezra Pound in Bunting’s estimate, produced mountainous work, difficult to either scale or bypass – but sometimes a joy to behold ‘if the reader doesnt spend time and energy looking for a nice logical syllogistic development which isnt there’ (Bunting to Harriet Monroe, quoted p. 285). A disciple of Pound, Bunting would later form a vital link between high modernism and the literary experimentalism of 1960s Britain. As Don Share rightly points out in this book, ‘That Bunting’s work has so often been published defectively is a poignant and crucial fact about the circumstances of his life and the fate of his work’ (p. xxvi).

On Pavel Ryzhakov’s Notes on Easter in Ansali [Paskha v Enzeli

The article polemicizes with P. Ryzhakov’s review appearing in the same issue. Citing a wider context of Khlebnikov’s work, the author challenges Ryzhakov’s thesis about the identification of the lyrical hero in Easter in Ansali [Paskha v Enzeli ] with Razin, and offers an alternative, more restrained, interpretation. He argues that the critic is mistaken in associating the protagonist with the antagonist: indeed, the Razin reference is there, but it is fragmentary and marginal, while the main idea of the poem is Khlebnikov breaking away from his past. And this parting is metaphorically described as taking monastic vows and tonsuring, hence the image of the long unruly hair and a number of biblical associations, including the ritualistic washing of the feet. Pavlovsky suggests that Ryzhakov’s analysis, while academically accurate and interesting, misses the point: the poem is about Khlebnikov, not Razin.

Notes on Easter in Ansali [Paskha v Enzeli

The article provides an extensive commentary of V. Khlebnikov’s poem Easter in Ansali [Paskha v Enzeli ]. The author discovers and analyses two major plotlines: a documentary (or autobiographical) one and a Stepan Razin-inspired one, both developed in parallel to each other in terms of the metaphors chosen for the poem. The documentary level is concerned with Khlebnikov’s visit to Persia, on board of the steamboat Kursk (hence the poem’s numerous mentions of kursky, korskoye), while the covert, Razin-related level transpires as a memory of the captive Persian girl: in 1669, Razin’s fleet defeated the Persians, and took various spoils, including, as legend has it, a daughter of the commander of the Shakh’s fleet. It is this girl who is mentioned in the folk song ‘From beyond the island towards the river’s widest flow’ [‘Iz-za ostrova na strezhen’], quoted in Khlebnikov’s poem. By bringing together the poem’s two levels through a commentary about several memorable metaphors (like ‘the Zorgam gorge’, ‘the dark unruly hair’, as well as comparing Razin to a nightingale), the author reveals that the lyrical hero identifies himself with Razin, who appears as the former’s lyrical doppelganger as well as the poet’s alter ego.

A girl struggling with extremely unruly hair

From U Fund Conf Corre of An otherwise healthy 9-year-old girl presented with lusterless, unruly hair that seldom required cutting. Her mother denied any hair-pulling behavior, the occurrence of inflammatory scalp lesions, or bald patches. The girl’s brother had the same hair features, whereas her sister had normal hair growth. The physical examination revealed a girl with matte, shaggy hair on a normal scalp (Fig 1); there were no tooth or nail abnormalities. Her hair pull test was positive and caused minimal discomfort; a predominance of anagen hairs ([80%) was seen on trichogram. Trichoscopy and light microscopy results are shown (Figs 2 and 3).

Arms for Art, and Other Shenanigans: The Curious Case of a Marble Bust of John C. Calhoun

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The North Carolina Museum of Art first opened its doors in April 1956. That same month the museum received from the North Carolina Hall of History a marble bust of John C. Calhoun by the American sculptor Hiram Powers (1805-1873). Apparently, the Hall of History, later renamed the North Carolina Museum of History (NCMA), had little use for a bust of the seventh vice president of the United States. Though the preeminent statesman and political theorist of the Antebellum South, Calhoun was, after all, a South Carolinian. Also, the sculpture was damaged, the purity of its Tuscan marble surface marred by unsightly yellow stains of unknown origin. Even the provenance of the bust was a mystery: the Hall of History had no record of a donor. The Museum of Art accepted the sculpture without much enthusiasm, consigning it to the secondary Study Collection. In 1984, a conservator valiantly attempted to clean the bust, but the deeply saturated stains remained. In order to make the sculpture more presentable as a work of art, it was decided to mask the stains with stippled gouache, rubbed wax, and powdered talc. Wearing this cosmetic, John C. Calhoun has long glowered on his pedestal in the NCMA'S American Galleries. (1) That a portrait of a once-famous politician by an equally famed sculptor could be traced no further than the 1950s and the storeroom of the Hall of History sparked inevitable questions and a lengthy inquiry. Ultimately, a story emerged that places this marble bust at both the jubilant beginning and the bitter ending of the Civil War in North Carolina. For color and eccentricity, few tales can match it. The story begins in 1835 in Washington, D.C., where the young Vermont-born sculptor Hiram Powers convinced many of the nation's good and great to sit for bust portraits. Working in a makeshift studio in the Capitol, Powers modeled each bust in clay for later casting in plaster and replicating in the whitest statuary marble. President Andrew Jackson sat for him, as did former President John Quincy Adams, Chief Justice John Marshall, and Senator John C. Calhoun. (2) Calhoun's bust, modeled in late December 1835, is one of Powers's more memorable portrayals, combining classical idealism with an almost alarming intensity of character. While noting the nobility of Calhoun's head, the sculptor remarked that the senator's eyes seem to burn in their sockets with all the surpassing restlessness and vigour of his soul. For the bust, Powers tamed Calhoun's unruly hair, which he deemed effeminate and soft, into a more Roman coiffure. The brows were beetled to cast pensive shadows over the eyes. The cheeks, hollow from loss of teeth, accentuated the asceticism of the face. Unusual among Powers's portraits, Calhoun gazes left and downward, suggestive perhaps of an ancient orator marshalling his arguments before speaking. Powers later boasted that many people thought his portrait of Calhoun pass for a bust of Brutus. (3) By all accounts, Calhoun was flattered by the portrait. He later wrote to Powers, If I am to go down to posterity, there lives not an artist to whom I would so willing[ly] trust myself as you. The great man took a kindly interest in the young artist's career and saw to it that Powers was selected to carve his statue, which was planned for the City of Charleston. The Calhoun statue was the sculptor's first important civic commission. He received word of it in Italy, where he had moved in 1837, following the much-traveled pilgrimage trail of American artists to the art capitals of Europe. In Powers's case, he never looked back. He settled with his family in Florence in the moldering Grand Duchy of Tuscany, eventually leasing a spacious studio and upstairs apartment in the Via dei Fornaci, later renamed Via Serraglie. There he worked on the Calhoun statue, which he conceived as a toga-clad figure unfurling a scroll on which were inscribed the senator's watchwords: Truth, Justice and the Constitution. …

Her Books: Moving My Mother's Library to Al-Quds

Her Books: Moving My Mother's Library to Al-Quds

Do These Sequins Make My Butt Look Fat? Wardrobe, Image, and the Challenge of Identity in the Music of Black American Women

When blues singer Ma Rainey stepped onto the stage in the early 1900s, resplendent in a diamond-studded tiara, a necklace made of gold pieces, and a ball gown in a rich shade of blue, audiences were no doubt bemused by the dichotomous images they saw. The appearance of the glamorously adorned, theatrical Rainey stood in stark contrast to the ordinary Rainey, whose plain face, unruly hair, and mouth filled with gold teeth were a realistic complement to her corpulent, squat body. Indeed, one of the best-known photographs of Ma Rainey is a study in paradox: soulful eyes that are at once wise, melancholy, and playful, full lips parted almost against their will to reveal crooked teeth etched in gold, and fleshy arms encased in a satin dress trimmed in beads and sequins. Nearly a century later, rapper Lil' Kim rocked (and shocked) hip-hop audiences with her call girl's wardrobe of animal print thongs, pasties, and multicolored boas. If viewers understood the publicity-driven nature of Kim's outré album covers and interview photos, they were no doubt confounded by her shape-shifter image as a blue-eyed, platinum-blond black woman. As photographer Annie Leibovitz noted, “Sociologically [Kim] is really fascinating because she is not only dressing up to be a woman, but she's dressing up to be a white woman.”1 In the early 2000s, Nicki Minaj and Janelle Monáe brought a fresh look to popular culture with their idiosyncratic wardrobes. Hip-hop artist Minaj, outfitted in a collection of rainbow-hued wigs and fanciful clothing, challenged audiences to consider her unique sex appeal on her own terms, while rhythm and blues performer Monáe, clad in her signature outfit of tuxedo and saddle shoes, gave audiences a new perspective on what it means to “dress like a woman.” Along the way, Motown's Supremes introduced recherché sophistication to popular culture in the 1960s, making elbow-length gloves and evening gowns de rigueur in their performance wardrobe. Their target audience, driven in part by the marketing savvy of Berry Gordy, Motown's founder, was white women in their teen and early adult years who would embrace the romance of the group's glamorous demeanor.

White Supremacy under Fire: The Unrewarded Perspective in Edward P. Jones's <i>The Known World</i>

The sexually charged relationship that Clara Martin, a white widow, has with her lone slave Ralph in Edward P. Jones’s The Known World (2003) will strike most readers as schizophrenic. Though she is intensely attracted to Ralph, she goes to mental and social extremes to resist acknowledging her feelings even as she continues to actively pursue him. The event that throws her into this chaotic state of resistance occurs on the fi rst night of a three-day-long storm when, after struggling to comb her wet thick unruly hair, she consents to Ralph’s compliment-laced offer to do it for her. Finding the experience both emotionally comforting and intensely erotic, Clara allows him to groom her hair again over the next two nights. When the storm ends she discontinues the grooming without explanation. Shortly thereafter, she conjures up the notion that Ralph is secretly plotting to rape and murder her. At one point, after reading a local newspaper account of a slave, out of spite, putting fi nely ground glass in her master’s food, Clara becomes so suspicious of Ralph, who has been her cook for twenty-four years, that she abruptly stops eating the food he prepares and loses weight in the process. In addition to declining to eat his food, she has Ralph interrogated, albeit with pointed directives not to “hurt his feelings” or “say anything mean” (153), by fi rst the slave patrollers and then John Skiffi ngton, the sheriff of Manchester County, neither of whom fi nds evidence of wrongdoing. Eclipsing the unfounded need to investigate Ralph’s behavior, Clara begins a nightly ritual of nailing shut her bedroom door and sleeping with two knives—one by her bedside and the other under her pillow “as close as a lover” (162). Despite her expressed fears about Ralph’s motives, Clara collapses into an emotional state of panic after slavery is abolished and Ralph announces that he plans to leave Virginia and go live with his extended family in Washington, DC. The narrator reports that Clara “cried and cried” when Ralph informed her of his plans to move, entreating him like a desperate lover to remain with her in Virginia (163).

Wasted Whiteness: The Racial Politics of the Stoner Film

Wasted Whiteness: The Racial Politics of the Stoner Film

Petty syndrome and Fontaine–Farriaux syndrome: Delineation of a single syndrome

In 1990, Petty et al. described two patients representing a novel syndrome with "congenital progeriod" features and neither had classical progeria nor Wiedemann-Rautenstrauch syndrome, though many findings were overlapping. One of the cases had previously been described by Dr. Wiedemann in 1948. The key features of Petty syndrome include pre and postnatal growth restriction, decreased subcutaneous fat with loose skin, enlarged fontanelle with underdeveloped calvarium, coronal synostosis, unruly hair pattern with non-uniform distribution, prominent eyebrows, umbilical hernia, distal digital hypoplasia, and normal or near normal development. Significant overlap to other syndromes, particularly the Fontaine-Farriaux syndrome, is apparent. In 2004, Ardinger postulated that Petty syndrome, like classical progeria, might be secondary to a defect in the lamin A/C (LMNA) gene. The purpose of this paper is to describe two new unrelated cases of this unique syndrome that further delineate the phenotype, compare to phenotypically similar syndromes, and postulate that Petty syndrome could represent a new laminopathy. In addition, evidence suggesting that the Petty syndrome and Fontaine-Farriaux syndromes are variable expressions of the same condition is discussed.

A Parallel Universe

Hey, Sweet Petunia! Fresh from an anti-Vietnam War parade through the streets of Berkeley, California, my mother, Gracie, explodes into my sterile white hospital room decked out in one of her velvety, rainbow-hued robes, three Zuni turquoise necklaces, and her favorite ring that's adorned with a gigantic silver eagle, its wingspan the width of her hand. She's woven a crown of iridescent pheasant and crow feathers into her honey blonde hair, and she's clutching a bunch of daisies I'm sure she's filched from somebody's garden. Imagine me a grandmother! Gracie exclaims in her throaty voice as she hurries to my bedside, plants an extravagant kiss on my nose, and stands beaming down on me. I've just been in labor for twenty- four hours - during which I have, according to the standards of womanly heroism prevailing in the early seventies, rejected all medication. I resisted the doctor's recommendation of a cesarean section and huffed and puffed my way through labor until I was light-headed. baby someone finally plopped on my breast was coated with a creamy white substance. I thought he was a fish - a floppy salmon maybe. It was through haze of exhaustion I caught a glimpse of my son before two latex-gloved hands whisked him away to a plastic box-bed in a nursery down the hall. Then I surrendered to the painkillers. Stupefied with both exhaustion and drugs now, I'm sobbing into my pillow, hair matted to my scalp with sweat. I don't know where I am. No notion why I'm here. Before my mother's arrival, a nurse had peeked into my room with a worried look and asked me for my name. I'd stared back blankly. How's my Sweet Petunia! Slowly, Gracie swims into focus, a blur of lavender against the white wall, reeling me back to reality. I'm twenty-four years old, but my mother's scarcely forty. Though the blonde hair haloes her face contrasts with my dark flyaway curls, we share the high cheekbones Gracie has always attributed to a mysterious Native American ancestor. To Grade's delight, people often mistake us for sisters. My mother's face is wide eyed, as unwrinkled as of the fifteen-year-old child she was when she fled her Virginia family to elope with the forty-year-old defrocked, gawky professor, with his unshakable convictions about the malevolence of human institutions, the passionate green eyes and unruly hair I'd inherit. She was carrying only a few pieces of clothing and her arrowhead collection in a castoff suitcase. A year after my mother took off with her professor and headed for California, I was born, but before I turned two, my father wandered off to begin a new life in Los Angeles with a fresh crop of young disciples, leaving Gracie and me to shift for ourselves. Scarcely out of childhood herself, her own mother dead since Gracie was a toddler, disowned by her family for eloping with her big sister's favorite professor - that blasted German kike, as her father called him - my mother had turned survival into an elaborate game of chance. Utterly unprepared for teenaged motherhood, Gracie concluded rules were for morons. She might launch into a soft-shoe routine or a few bars of The Beer Barrel Polka in the grocery store checkout line, while I tried to disappear within the folds of her skirt. Staid matrons of the conservative L. A. suburb where we rented a gardener's cottage stared, their jaws agape, but such reactions only encouraged Gracie. Any attention was better than none. For my entire life, I've been the quiet one, the mute attendant in Grade's rackety world. I spent my childhood brooding in her shadow, my tangled hair I never allowed her to brush spilling over my face, while my mother, in her gauzy skirts and bright, flowing hair fluttered like a moth to the spotlight. When she tried to drag me off to extravaganzas or on extended hitchhiking trips or to one of her countless rallies and marches and howlings-at-the-moon, I'd latch onto a table leg and kick. …

Nablus mask‐like facial syndrome is caused by a microdeletion of 8q detected by array‐based comparative genomic hybridization

In 2000, Teebi reported on a 4-year-old boy with a distinctive pattern of malformation, which he termed the "Nablus mask-like facial syndrome" (OMIM# 608156). Characterization of this syndrome has been difficult because of the paucity of patients described in the medical literature and its unknown etiology and pathogenesis. We present two patients with Nablus mask-like facial syndrome who both display a microdeletion in the 8q21-8q22 region detected by array-based comparative genomic hybridization. Patient 1, a boy, has a distinct facial appearance characterized by severe blepharophimosis, tight-appearing glistening facial skin, sparse and unruly hair, a flat and broad nose, and distinctive ears that are triangular in shape with prominent antihelices. He also demonstrates camptodactyly, contractures, unusual dentition, cryptorchidism, mild developmental delay, and a happy demeanor. Patient 2, a girl with a strikingly similar phenotype, was previously described in a report by Salpietro et al. 2003. She has distinctive ears, dental anomalies, and developmental delay. The etiology of her pattern of malformation was not identified at that time. Although high-resolution chromosome and subtelomeric FISH analyses were normal, array-based comparative genomic hybridization revealed an approximately 4 Mb deletion involving the 8q21.3-8q22.1 region in both patients. This region encompasses a number of genes that may contribute to this unique phenotype. These results demonstrate a chromosomal microdeletion as the etiology of Nablus mask-like facial syndrome and emphasize the diagnostic utility of array-based comparative genomic hybridization in the evaluation of multiple malformation syndromes of previously unrecognized causation.

Critical Studies in a Post-Theoretical Age: Three Books Sort of about Wallace Stevens

Eeckhout, Bart. 2002. Wallace Stevens and the Limits of Reading and Writing. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press. $49.95 hc. xi + 303 pp. Harrington, Joseph. 2002. Poetry and the Public: The Social Form of Modern U. S. Poetics. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. $50.00 hc. $24.95 sc. x + 228 pp. Santilli, Kristine S. 2002. Poetic Gesture: Myth, Wallace Stevens, and the Motions of Poetic Language. London: Routledge. $80.00 hc. xvi + 160 pp. A decade ago, I attended a conference that brought together literary scholars, engineers, politicians, and others interested in environmental issues. The keynote speaker remarked that when literary scholars address mixed audiences, they ought to [End Page 200] refrain from using jargon. In literary conferences, he said, discipline-specific terms are of course meaningful. However, since environmental issues are typically interdisciplinary, literary scholars should use words that everybody else understands. In the question-and-answer period, a younger man with a goatee and black turtleneck stood up and argued that literary scholars should use as much jargon as possible in (apparently) every context in order to create an oppositional discourse. Immediately afterwards, an older man with unruly hair and a tweed jacket stood up and asserted that the black turtleneck was in error; in fact, all theory of the past thirty years had been one huge mistake. This prompted a rejoinder from another black turtleneck—and so it went, the black turtlenecks versus the tweed jackets, back and forth, all staking their positions on theory then crossing their arms as they waited for the other side to stop talking. At the time, what struck me most forcibly was the debate's belatedness. The preposterous notion that all theory of the past thirty years should be jettisoned was clearly one generation's pique at having its premises questioned. For the tweed jackets, criticism properly dealt with the correct interpretation of text; method was somehow natural and inevitable, and thus they perceived themselves as writing without theory. I think most of my contemporary readers will find that last clause untenable. Nonetheless, the black turtleneck contention that theory is a good in and of itself seems equally untenable. If it is an alternative language you want, why not write in hip-hop dialect or Farsi? You don't have to read many essays in New Literary History to find politically-minded theorists worrying that the institutionalization of their oppositional discourse distances it from the cause it advocates. Certainly, the general dissemination of poststructural theory had the salutary effect of showing the world that all readings proceed from some theory, some method of locating significance. However, in the theoretical age, there was still the dream of adequacy, that Jacques Derrida had found the key to language, or Michel Foucault to sexuality, and so on. The average critic's job was to leave the theorizing to the New Authorities and simply apply their theories to other texts. Thus, I am defining the theoretical age as one in which it was only necessary to announce a theory and apply it. The movement that began in opposition soon developed a legion of believers who refused to think beyond accepted parameters. I once sat in on a session on Bakhtinian readings at a graduate literary conference. In the question-and-answer period, I remarked that all three papers had shown us how theory could be applied to the works in question. I asked if the works suggest any critique, blindness, or need for further development in the theory. The three panelists, all from prestigious graduate programs, gave the same, one-word answer: no. Their curt reply [End Page 201] indicated that the panelists had never considered the question and never intended to. From my perch in the opening decade of the twenty-first century, that "no" answer was only adequate in the theoretical age. In this, the post-theoretical era, a critic must understand her own...

Pili annulati (pelos anillados)

Abstract—We present a case of pili annulati (ringed hair), an uncommon hair shaft abnormality unassociated with breakage or unruly hair, in a 9-year-old girl. This is an autosomal dominant (occasionally sporadic) condition, which shows alternating light and dark bands under light microscopy, the later due to the presence of air-filled spaces in the cortex.

Quantitative Assessment of Scanning Electron Microscope Defects in Uncombable‐Hair Syndrome

Uncombable-hair syndrome is a rare disorder of scalp hair that starts early in childhood. It is characterized clinically as unruly hair and by scanning electron microscopy as longitudinally grooved hairs with a triangular cross section. Because of the controversy of inheritance and prior reports of similar changes in normal and other hair disorders, we performed a quantitative scanning electron microscopic assessment of four patients with uncombable-hair syndrome, first-degree relatives, and nonaffected controls. Our results indicate that longitudinal grooving of scalp hair is a common occurrence, and that for clinical changes to be apparent, approximately 50% of hairs must be affected.

Unruly hair.

One of the difficulties dermatologists encounter when attempting to diagnose rare scalp hair abnormalities is knowing where to start. Faced with a patient presenting with 'frizzy' hair it is helpful to have a systematic approach rather than simply 'thumb through the books'. Price (1979) classifies anomalies of the hair shaft in to those associated with increased fragility which consequently give rise to alopecia, and those which are not thus associated. There is a significant group of disorders which present with unruly hair, and these have been described under all manner of titles, including crinkly, woolly, kinky, crimped, frizzly, steely, spunglass, in an attempt to define their clinical appearance. This only serves to confuse the issue as no one word adequately describes many of these abnormalities. I would like to suggest an approach for categorizing and diagnosing unruly hair forms, based on a review of the literature as well as on experience with such cases. This is a modified and extended version of the only previous classification of unruly hair proposed by Lantis and Pepper (1978). I accept that there are some individual cases which are difficult to classify and remain unique.

Unruly Scalp Hair in Infancy: Its Nature and Relevance to Problems of Brain Morphogenesis

A relationship has been deduced between aberrant scalp hair directional patterning and problems in early brain development and function. The unusual scalp hair patterns noted by Smith and Gong1,2 were frontal upsweep and aberrant parietal whorl(s). The purpose of this article is to report a third type of unusual scalp hair patterning, unruly hair over the top of the scalp, and its association with problems in brain development. This feature was initially observed by Freund in 1910,3 who noted its association with neuropathic dysfunction in infants. METHODS The definition of unruly hair is that which naturally and persistently tends to stand up over the top of the head from the area of the posterior parietal whorl toward the frontal hairline.

Woolly Hair Nevus

• Woolly hair is very curly hair that is characteristically unruly and will not form naturally into locks. Woolly hair nevus first appears when the scalp hair begins to grow. It is seen as a patch of unruly, very curly hair, arising in a field of otherwise unremarkable scalp hair. Woolly hair can also be seen as a hereditary trait involving the entire scalp and in acquired forms. It may be distinguished from two other types of unruly hair, pili torti and spun glass hair. (<i>Arch Dermatol</i>114:233-238, 1978)

John Miller Woodburn Morison.

“Death hath this also, that it openeth the gate to good fame and extinguisheth envy.” “Pop” Morison was a character. We have no sooner lamented the dearth of characters in medicine to-day than we find ourselves saddened by the loss of yet another well-loved personality. John Miller Woodburn Morison had an appearance worthy of his name; built on the grand scale with a high forehead surrounded by a halo of unruly hair, he had the presence and manner of a famous actor, and looked like a distinguished professor ought to look and so seldom does. It was the voice that added the finishing touch, deep and resonant with a glorious Scottish accent to adorn the good stories with which he continually delighted us.