Mr. Monkey Man with Plaited Hair

That’s right, all of you who might be follicly challenged can gaze at wonder upon Mr. MMwPH here! For while the average humanoid blonde might be toting around perhaps 140,000 or so hairs upon their golden maned cranium — and the brunettes and the redheads and the balding among us so many, many far fewer than that — this guy’s displaying around 750,000 properly plaited and pristine strands of coiffed head fuzz! And what a sight to see!

But as striking as it is to observe, this look is achieved only through the most arduous of personal hygiene and styling regimens.

To begin with, our guy maintains only the best of hair-healthy diets. That means ingesting large quantities of B vitamins such as inositol, folate and B6 by way of tuna, cauliflower, liver, red peppers, mustard greens, wheat germ, limes, asparagus, soybeans, eggplants, beets and spinach. He then adds the essential proteins found in brown rice, tofu, avocados, soy milk, green peas, yogurt and sunflower seeds. To top it all off, he adds peanuts, turnip greens and almonds for Vitamin E.

Okay, then. Once his stomach has settled a bit and he can leave the confines of his toilet, Mr. Monkey Man proceeds to wash his plentiful hair with copious amounts of shampoo. He uses only the best (and home-made) concoction combining a surfactant, a co-surfactant, salt, preservative, wax, silicone, pearlescent flakes of glycol distearate, polyquaternium-10, and a smidge of oil bearing the ever-so-subtle fragrance of a young hibiscus bloom.

A rousing scalp, face, chin, nape and neck massage and thorough rinsing later, he’s ready for the hair conditioning phase. This time he reaches for his second vial of home-mixed goo: a blend of sunscreen, anti-static agent, fatty alcohol lubricant, detangler, acidifier, moisturizer, hydrolyzed protein, heat-absorbing polymers, cyclomethicone, cationic surfactant, and sequestrant. (Why not mix your own ideal hair conditioner using these ingredients from your medicine chest?)

Next comes 52 minutes or so of hair drying.

OK. Ready for the brushing, combing, and otherwise arranging the frothy array into properly stranded, sculpted, layered, shaped, trimmed, folded, braided plaits. This step requires a top-quality oversized contoured pig-bristle styling brush in the firm grasp of each hand, with an auxiliary broad-toothed rat-tail comb pinned tightly twixt each thumb and forefinger. Remember — 100 strokes are required for each substantial clutch of hair (meaning you’d have biceps the size of Hulk Hogan’s after just a week or two of tending such tresses!).

In completing the overall desired visual affect, it most often proves helpful to have additional styling accessories: combs, wands, scissors, irons, rollers, clips, barrettes, crimpers, beads, ribbons, headbands, scrunchies, flowers, feathers, extensions, creams, gels, lotions, serums, sprays, oils, mousses, dyes, bleaches, setting solutions, and a selection of falls or wigs, just in case.

Of course, this character might run away with the trophy for most magnificent mane of arrayed hirsutude among hominids, but he’d still be handily outshone by the average styled sea otter. Each of those playful critters boasts no fewer than one million hairs per square inch of water-slicked hide, bringing their strand count to nearly a billion hairs per adult otter!