Further proof that no one really cares how you look

I got a haircut today.

It was a spur of the moment thing. As spur of the moment as something you've been meaning to do for the past three months can be. You know how it is, you sketch out this elaborate PLAN that ties in SO NEATLY with your Very Precise Daily Routine but you never get around to implementing it because, gosh darn it, there is no TIME in your Very Precise Daily Routine to make that phone call to set that appointment.

But things were getting desperate. This was evident as the hair seemed to be developing a rather dangerous mind of its own, proclaiming itself Bodyguard Extraordinaire and going out of its way to make sure no harm came to my person. I'd be rather proud of it, if it wasn't so much the stuff of a Stephen King novel.

You know your hair is too long when people start commenting on how long it is. When it starts developing split ends. When there are more tangles than usual. When it tries to smother, strangle or choke anyone who attempts to show even the slightest hint of affection towards the person directly beneath it.

It's been six months since my last hair cut - a year and a half since my last SIGNIFICANT hair cut. Or what I thought was a significant haircut. You see, after I'd had half the hair on my head sawed off, I thought this was a significant hair cut as well. Having torn my eyes away from the sad mountain of tentacles on the floor, I stepped into the street and went back to my Very Precise Daily Routine and met the people I usually meet in the course of my Very Precise Daily Routine and what were their comments on my New Look?

There weren't any. They didn't bat an eyelid. I lost a kilogram of hair and no one could even tell. 

Which leads me to the mathematical conclusion that there is an optimum hair length beyond which the human eye is incapable of effectively registering any further follicular extension. I peg it at just below shoulder length. From this point on the Difference Perception accelerates as length of hair becomes progressively shorter. I'm trying to use cool scientific lingo here but it's been 8 years since I last did physics and the only way I can give these words any cred whatsoever is if I allot symbols to everything and then formulate an equation.

OK:

P = -(Δ)

Where Ρ is the viewer's Perception of Difference

and Δ is the variability in hair length from the Optimum Length. If it gets cut, Δ is negative. If it grows, Δ is positive.

It would be cool if I could work a "^2" into there since I said P accelerates, but I see no way of doing that without destroying the point of the minus sign.

This equation explains why I am visibly distressed whenever boys go around getting their hair trimmed, while they barely register my radical transformation from Rapunzel to, er, chick with regular length hair.

Or it could be that whole hair fetish thing I have.