Shave and a haircut

Back about six weeks ago, the London Guardian gleefully broke a story about how North Korea had a TV series with the catchy name of “Let's trim our hair in accordance with the socialist lifestyle.” Kim Jong-il had mandated that North Koreans should wear their hair between 1 and 5 centimeters in length (between about a half inch and two inches), and had four styles that were deemed acceptable; crewcut, and variations known as “high, middle, and low” styles. That doesn’t sound very egalitarian, I agree. “Low style” one supposes, might include fleas, ticks and dandruff. According to the show, it was considered patriotic to get your hair trimmed every two weeks.

For anyone who’s wondering, the rationale behind all this was that excessive hair growth promoted loss of intelligence and general debilitation, and presumably, if you cut it frequently, this would conceal the fact that you were suffering from low intelligence and general debilitation. 

Except for der leader, of course. He still looks like a Kewpie doll on steroids, and the matter of his intelligence and stamina may be surmised from his vertical mop.

The story was greeted with a fair bit of derision in the west, and that is as it should be. Granted, most western militaries have even more stringent grooming requirements, but at least the generals don’t wander around looking like Don King after he licked a wall plug. It’s generally understood that military discipline is one thing, but that civilians are entitled to be free of such nonsense.

Certainly AMERICANS are free of such nonsense! If the government attempted to mandate hair length, there would be riots, and possibly revolution! You can’t do that to a free people!

Except, of course, for the fact that many, perhaps most Americans are even more hag-ridden with rules regarding appearance and personal deportment than the people of nearly every nation on earth, including North Korea.

The rich developed the vanity of having their servants dressed in some sort of house livery, and have their hair trimmed in certain ways, usually so they would all appear the same. It was a conceit, and one of the repressive affectations of aristocratic Europe that Americans rebelled against.

But the wealthy in America adopted the repulsive practice in the 19th century, and it spread to corporations, who hoped that regimenting the appearance of their workers would not only be a form of marketing known as “branding” but further assert dominance over those luckless employees. 

So every time you walk into a chain restaurant, you see some poor kid dressed in some ugly polyester costume. A quick glance at the corporate rules has stipulations regarding hair length, grooming, and requirements for clothing not covered by the uniforms, such as slacks. In most cases, the employees are expected to buy the required clothing not furnished by the corporation. Usually out of their minimum wage.

What? Suddenly “Let's trim our hair in accordance with the socialist lifestyle” doesn’t seem so foreign to the American experience?

It gets worse. Some of these outfits require their employees to SMILE (and will fire them if they don’t) and chirp inanities such as “Have a happy fresh day at McVomits!” Basic rights of employees in America are nearly non-existent, and in most cases, these companies need absolutely no reason to fire an employee, or cut their hours back to four a week, forcing them to quit. So they can get away with a lot that lies outside even the toothless rules that protect employees. You can pretty much assume that for every case of employers forcing employees to work “off the clock” (and a lot of these chain restaurants do just that, requiring them to clock out after a half hour of closing clean-up, even if it’s normally a two-hour job, and of course, fire them if the cleaning isn’t done), there’s a hundred such cases that go unreported.

Self employment is an escape, but a tenuous one. I know of one woman, doing specialized computer work in a medium sized town. She was reliable and accurate, and carved out a good enough living that she was able to buy a nice house in the woods. But then a corporation offering the same services for about 80% of her cost came in, the Big Client dumped her and took up with the corporation, and she eventually found work she could–with that company, doing the same work she had been doing while self-employed, but at one third the pay. She’s struggling to make payments on that house now. Even more insulting is that the corporation requires that she work certain hours (even though she’s working out of her home still, and emailing it in) and set up a device to monitor the number of keystrokes per hour, to be sure they were getting their money’s worth. After all, they have to be productive so they can afford to knock out any other remaining independents in the field. 

At least they don’t make her dress up in a polyester clown costume and put smiley faces on her work. I suppose there’s that. And she gets to keep her hair. By the standards of most American employees, she’s privileged. 

She gets to live with the fear, just like a North Korean peon, but not with any of the security. 

Imagine if the government started dictating how you wear your hair, how you dress, what your income should be, and watched you with unblinking eyes, monitoring your labor, and even involving itself in mandating what outside activities you could engage in, and who you could speak to (many companies forbid even social intercourse with workers from rival companies). 

You would have a revolution. Roadside bombs, congressmen hanging from lamp posts, all of that.

Many companies treat their employees in America with the same dignity and respect with which the loony government in North Korea treats its subjects. And nobody says a word. Indeed, many Americans will be horrified by this essay. How dare I suggest that employees should have rights! Next, I’ll be talking about eliminating ‘right to work” laws and forcing companies to accept employee unionization if the employees so want. 

But then, I don’t cotton to the notion of “ hair in accordance with the socialist lifestyle”. So why should I cotton to “hair in accordance with the fascist lifestyle”?