HairCut Inspections

Among the many "cute" policies we had back in highschool, one that frequently comes back to haunt me is that of the haircut inspection. By cute of course, I mean "weird shit we do on a regular basis without any practical reason".

The policy goes like this:

1. No bangs can go longer than from the tip of your scalp to your eyebrow.

Anything longer is tantamount to satan worship, apparently. Offenders caught will be choosing between having it cut off by the inspecting teacher with the dullest scissors he can find OR wearing colorful rubber bands that hold your hair up, screaming "fabulous" to anybody within a 10 meter radius. You get that, plus penalties in your deportment/conduct grade.

2. Students from first to third year are allowed to have haircuts that are at least 3x4, which means your sideburns will have to be shaved 3 inches from the tip of your ear and 4 inches at the back.

This can be a bitch, since most barbers outside muntinlupa jail dont spend too much time mastering the art of shaving hair off. More often than not they make small mistakes ranging from leaving behind clumps of hair to accidentally giving you 5 new ear piercings with the shaver.

3. Non-CAT officer senior students are required to don 4x5 measures, white side wall.

I think there's this going thought amongst teachers that graduating students will get an extra boost in intelligence during college entrance exams if they have less hair because there are less hair follicles to obstruct your brain. If you think #2 was pretty fucked up, this rule is even worse. White side wall means 4 inches of the side of your head from the tip of your ear will be cleanly shaven, along with 5 inches at the back of your head. Shaven clean. That means you'll be bald except for a nice patch of grass at the very top, making you appear one tee short of a golf handicap shot.

Any barber will tell you, this haircut is not for the weak of heart. Blades that are used to shave this amount of hair dull out and get throw away after the haircut. It's not uncommon to hear about fainting barbers during peak haircut season (i.e. 8 hours before haircut inspection day)

4. Skinheads are forbidden.

Then you'd think, well, since it's 4x5 already, might as well go all the way and do away with the goddamn remaining hair that looks like a bird's nest from 20 meters away. At least that way, the cut will be uniform and we could be mistaken for basketball stars and/or shaolin (depending on your puberty pimple configuration) , right?

Wrong.

Rule #4 forbids this, for reasons that still baffle me even until today. I asked my teacher about it once, and he answered "because certain criminal elements use this haircut, and we want do not our students to be identified with these nefarious personalities." I shit you not.

Hitler wore a fucking one-side too, why are we worshiping Rizal? It's like school admin has come to believe that when an outstanding citizen of society decides to go criminal one day, he first goes through the ritual of shaving his hair clean. Nice one! We better report this to the PNP so we can capture us a boatload of criminals! Not.

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I'm not really against haircut inspections. Some cuts are still too "rad" for highschool, like punk mowhawk, beeswaxed rastafarian dreadlocks, and German. However, this fascistic approach to haircut inspections should really change. There is no master haircut and we don't need a final solution to eliminate other "impure" haircuts by implementing really "cute" rules that nobody can explain.

Whenever anybody asks where I got my randomness, I just say "highschool", because with policies like this, who needs rational thinking (or more hair)?