When a fellow theatregoer flicks her hair in my lap, should I brush it off?

At a theatre performance, the woman in front of me repeatedly flicked her long hair into my lap. I asked her politely to stop. She and her companion took great offence. Was it OK to ask?
D.M., Canterbury, Vic

Credit: Illustration by Drew Aitken

Hair is confusing. It can look magnificent cascading from someone’s head, but it can look slightly less magnificent cascading from someone’s back. It can be romantic running your fingers through your lover’s hair, but it can be nauseating pulling your lover’s hair out of a forkful of casserole.

It can be poetic, like Leonard Cohen singing, “Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm”, and it can be horrific, like when you tug a slimy hair-clump out of the shower-drain and it looks like a furry ferret foetus.

So, because hair is confusing, nobody should be flicking theirs onto the lap of a complete stranger in a theatre. This is a protein growing out of their body, so it’s no different to this woman flicking her armpit hair on you, or her pubic hair, or the hair-like villi inside her intestinal lining. You’re the one who should be offended: it’s bad enough just sitting behind someone for two hours in a theatre, staring at the back of their head while searching for head lice or playing virtual noughts and crosses in their cross-hatched, back-neck wrinkles. And you’ve paid good money for your seat. This is your home for the duration of the show, so if this woman’s hair was trespassing, it was definitely OK to ask her to get it off your property.

If she refused, you could have taken off your shoe and sock, popped your bare foot on her armrest, and wiggled your toes around. Then told her that hair and toenails are made of the exact same protein. It’s all keratin, Karen.

[e-mail]

To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.