Big, absurd hairstyles are great. How often have you seen an enormous and majestic beehive or afro and thought to yourself, “that must not be very good for your neck”? Or, sub-question, how often have you thought “how heavy could that hairdo be before the structural integrity of the neck gave out”?
Ow, that’s gotta hurt.
Well, researchers have found women in East Africa who can carry up to seventy percent of their body weight on their heads, and up to twenty percent of their body weight on their heads without exerting any extra energy. Of course, these necks are trained from daily toil, but assuming anyone could strive for this maximum, that means a one-hundred fifty pound person could have a hairdo weighing up to one-hundred and five pounds, or thirty pounds if they did not want to increase their energy output. Hairstyles have gotten pretty large over the course of history (Marie Antoinette, Dolly Parton, Angela Davis) but they have never gotten this large. The gauntlet has been thrown down, world. Don’t stop growing and teasing your hair until it physically engulfs you.
Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/