Ask Kermit—An Angry Guy’s Guide to Self-Defense: Hairdos and Safety

Sergeant Kermit is a Deputy Sheriff and firearms instructor in southwestern Virginia.  His column offers weekly advice to nice people who want to protect themselves from predators.  Want to ask an Angry  Guy your own self defense questions?  Email Sergeant Kermit at pirateepd@gmail.com or tweet him @pirateepd

I’m confused about whether I should wear my hair down or up to discourage a predator. I feel like I’ve heard both things. Hair up is easier to pull on, but hair down can be used to strangle/choke and is maybe a more vulnerable hairstyle? What’s the answer?

Yours truly, Ponytail Pondering

Listen to me Ponytail.  The correct answer is… neither.  What you want to do is to tie razor blades to strands of your hair and keep them tucked away in the layers.  It’s a technique that prisoners use to either hide blades, or to cut the hands of someone searching their hair for contraband.  So why not use their little mischief against them?  If someone tries to grab your hair, doom on their fingers!

This leads to another question:  What shampoo is best at removing blood?  For this, I do not have an answer.  My gut says to try a combination of hydrogen peroxide and Aussie Moist.  But I am bald, so what do I know about hair care?

If that is a little too radical for you, I understand.  After all, it could probably land you in jail.

But predators are more likely to focus on how alert you appear to be to your surroundings than on how you wear your hair.  The problem with long hair, up or down, is that it is easy to grab.  I’ve never heard of anyone being strangled with hair though.  I think the angle that it comes down from the head would make it hard to get the right leverage to effectively constrict breathing or blood flow.  If you like it better up, wear it up.  If you like it better down, wear it down.  If you change your personal style, THE TERRORISTS WIN!  Instead of adjusting your hair, adjust how you think about being attacked.

So let’s say they have you by the hair.  In the defensive sense, when someone means you harm, your body and brain are struggling to come to grips with the situation.  This is being done to you.  But let’s imagine this from an OFFENSIVE standpoint.  This person who has grabbed your hair has done two things. One, they have put themselves within your own attack range.  Two, they have given you all the permission you need to totally fuck them up.  So give yourself permission to go on the offensive and fuck them up.  To do this you have to know what your tools are – hands, teeth, keys, knife, brush, a bag full of breakables from Crate and Barrel – and use all of them with the sole purpose of destroying the threat to you.  I like to think that when an attacker grabs someone that it is merely the starting gun for the “victim” to bring every bit of their wrath and righteous indignation to bear on someone who really, really picked the wrong target.