How To Explain Snape's Hair

[darth_stitch]

I was supposed to be working today - gah. Technically, we have Mondays off but we had stuff to rush. Unfortunately, Monsieur Graphic Artiste is sick and texted me that he'll finish tomorrow what I was supposed to proofread this afternoon.

Oh well. I'm too tired to get out of the office so I'll mess around on LJ for a bit.



Fandom has about ten thousand explanations for Snape's hair and general appearance - ranging from one extreme end to the other. You know - he's actually gorgeous, it's a glamour spell and he has GREAT hair OR he's a complete dog, his hair's a grease magnet but we wuv him anyways.

But we'll settle on the hair. Personally, I think it's because of the potions and that the poor man could use a decent shampoo.

Still, I have my own favorite fic explanations or takes - from various fics - on The Hair. And hell, they're fun explanations. So there. I can't remember which fic they ALL came from so if anyone knows, drop me a line so I can find that story again for a re-read.

1. It's NOT greasy, it's actually very soft and very fine. - I think I spotted this in Telanu's Tea series first. *giggle* Hell, this was the first Snarry fic I ever read. And she gets away with it.

2. It's NOT really greasy. Snape puts on protective potions/salves/lotion/conditioner/whatever to keep it from getting into his potions. I've seen various variants of this in several fics and they're usually good for a giggle or two. Mweh.

3. My personal favorite. It's NOT greasy, it's oiled down because it's CURLY. Soft waves. Ringlet curly. Oh. My. God. *dies laughing* Curly hair? Snape? BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAA!!!!!!!! Spotted this in Lachesis' "The Return of the Prodigal." A most excellent fic - don't get me wrong about that. Very enjoyable read. Remind me to rec it sometime. But I just adore that bit. Curly hair....*snicker*

4. It's. Greasy. Damn. It. - This is for wikdsushi and hp_femme. Hair - soft, silky, shiny, falling round one's shoulders, threading through with gentle fingers....blah blah blah - we've all seen that done by many authors, some quite well and some not at all. Hell, I'm guilty of the "hair thing" m'self. But 'femme and Sushi, they stand by the Greasy Git and in their hands, he's still a sexy bastard, without being reduced to bishounen (pretty boy) status. For this, I must refer you to brevisse's most excellent satire comic of PrettyBoy! Fanon Snape vs. Canon Snape. *giggle*

Comments

[bridgetmc.livejournal.com]

I say his hair is like my hair. I take showers everyday, however, just a few hours later, my hair is greasy as fuck (well, maybe not to that extent, but I see it softening up, then becoming very oily and ick) and if I forget to wash my hair for one day? Yikes. So, I go with genetics. *waves impotent fist at the family tree*

Re:

[darth-stitch.livejournal.com]

I agree with you. Naturally oily and then there's the potions and it all goes to buggerty-fuck. Poor man is doomed.

The fun part about this though is that whichever potential mate we want for him (I'll give you one guess on which GUY I prefer he's shagging, take a look at most of my recs, nyahahaha) can drag His Snarkiness into the shower and shampoo it off. And teh shower smut. Mweh!

*blinks*

Ooh-kay. I hang around in The Dungeons and now I'm picking up profanity from Harry and Sirius. Good effing grief.

Re:

[serenasnape.livejournal.com]

So true! I wash mine EVERY single day. I think it needs washing approximately every 18 hours, and that's without doing anything strenuous and sweat-making. Stupid hair! Still, it is lovely and soft, so that's my theory - Snape has hair like mine.

Re:

[lyricalnights.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

My hair is gorgeously shiny and soft for about an hour when I wash it, then collapses into a nasty greasy mess.

I just got a plot bunny about Snape trying really hard to get, like, supermodel hair, and it keeps falling apart before he can show anyone. *giggles*

Re:

[driftingwind.livejournal.com]

I go with genetics too. Sometimes it seems to me that people do not believe people can naturally have greasy hair, it must be poor hygiene or glamour, or protective potions, or some other nasty things.

Unfortunately for people who naturally have greasy hair, although the condition may improve somewhat after using special hair care products, it does not improve a lot. Hair is indeed very soft and very fine to touch just after washing, but it gets greasy again in a few hours, and I am sure the potion laboratory environment does not help Snape to keep his hair from getting greasy at all.

*sigh*

You can tell I have naturally greasy hair too.

[http://users.livejournal.com/ari_/]

One of my favorite things about the Snape-parts of HP is that finally there's a character who's *UGLY*. Gah, but I hate all the good-looking people on most other shows (I mean, not hate them, but hate that everyone is beautiful on TV, and thus we gets tons of beautiful guys in TV fandom slash).

And then people take this wonderful, ugly character, and make him secretly beautiful. It makes me weep...

(I wish someone would write about Snape's smell. I mean, considering that he doesn't come across as too interested in hygiene, *and* works with potions all day... my fanwank as to why Harry hasn't mentioned this yet in the books is because everybody's noses shut down in self-defence when they come near Snape)

totally opposite view...

[millefiori.livejournal.com]

Your post was really interesting to me because I think we see Snape in almost totally opposite ways! Going solely by his physical description, I'd say he was rather ordinary looking -- there's nothing really *ugly* per se about thinness, a hooked nose, or crooked teeth. It's my belief that he's typically described in strongly negative (ugly) terms because Harry perceives his personality as ugly, and he therefore sees Snape in the worst possible light. (Ugly is as ugly does....)

As for the greasy hair, I've been inclined to agree with the poster above who thinks it's just secondary to having oily, fine, limp hair that looks dirty 15 minutes after it's washed -- I've known plenty of people with hair like that. I've espoused that belief rather than the poor hygeine theory *because* there's never been any canon mention of him having body odor or bad breath -- *surely* something that Harry would notice during the times they've been in close contact, or something that other students (or Sirius) would've mentioned when they're sitting around dissing Snape.

I agree with you, though about the fact that with few exceptions most people in the HP-verse seem to be rather ordinary looking (fanon revisionistas notwithstanding), which is refreshing!

[laurakaye.livejournal.com]

OK, now I'm crazy to take a look at the curly-hair fic.

Link? Please? *makes big pleading eyes*

Re:

[juice817.livejournal.com]

This is a great story! Enjoy - http://www.astronomytower.org/authors/lachesis/RP01.html

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Yes, me too - link to curly-hair fic, please? *g*

Re:

[juice817.livejournal.com]

Here you go http://www.astronomytower.org/authors/lachesis/RP01.html

It's one of my favorites.

[femmequixotic]

4. It's. Greasy. Damn. It.

YES. YES, YES, YES! *Femme jumps up and down, stomping feet*

No soft hair. No grease-inducing protective potions. (WTF? These still make no sense to me.) No CURLY HAIR, DAMN IT!

(This is my pet peeve. Can you tell? *snerk*)

The man is not attractive. His hair is greasy. His nose is too big. His teeth are atrocious. His social skills are in the negative digits.

He's a nasty, ugly, smelly, vicious bastard.

But that doesn't mean he's not a sexy son of a bitch.

That's the whole beauty of Snape...he's an ugly prick who's just too damn interesting to ignore. And the right person *cough*Draco*cough* can see past the non-conventionally attractive exterior and be intrigued by the complexity of the man.

Sexy isn't necessarily pretty.

Sexy is an outlandishly wicked intelligence, sexy is a razor-quick wit, sexy is a complete disregard of what other people might think of you, sexy is having your own moral compass, sexy is having the balls to put your life in danger for the right reason, sexy is a bitter disdain for people who fucked you over as a geeky teenager, sexy is just not giving a flying fuck.

Sexy is being able to screw over the Dark Lord.

Sexy is not clean hair.

*grin*

Re:

[triestine.livejournal.com]

A-friggin-men.

I am not happy when writers remove all that makes him imperfect. The trick is to keep the nasty hair and unattractive facial features, and use it to enhance his sexybitchiness. I for one am massively intrigued by (attracted to) men unlikely to appear in advertising posters. I want my Snape 'ugly'!

Yum.

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[darth-stitch.livejournal.com]

YES. YES, YES, YES! *Femme jumps up and down, stomping feet*

No soft hair. No grease-inducing protective potions. (WTF? These still make no sense to me.) No CURLY HAIR, DAMN IT!

(This is my pet peeve. Can you tell? *snerk*)

I know. That's why No. 4 is especially dedicated to you and Sushi. *giggle* But seriously, give the curly-hair fic a try - I went WTF? and then: "ooooh 'femme is going to go ballistic!"

And the right person *cough*Draco*cough* can see past the non-conventionally attractive exterior and be intrigued by the complexity of the man.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAILLLLLL!!!!!!! AUGH! How can you do this to us - leaving us Snarry fans at the mercy of the Evil BadSnarryfics of doom that include Weepy!Snape and Femme!Harry. AAAAARGH!!!!

I'm kidding. Really. *snerk* Honestly, looking at isolde's Draco, can I blame your Snape Muse?

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[dphearson.livejournal.com]

Yes. Yes. Yes.

I love you for saying this, all of it.

Snape is a greasy, skinny, sexy bastrad with fucked up teeth- and a heart as stern abd straight as a ship's compass.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

You forgot 5. It's extra-greasy because he deliberately makes it that way. Which is my personal pet theory.

I figure adolescent Severus really did have hygiene issues, coming from a background of poverty and neglect, but he would soon have picked up the habit of hair-washing if it hadn't been for @&*#! Sirius Black snarking on him about it, at which point he dug in his heels and determined that he was never going to conform to Black's ideas of how he should look, nohow, contrariwise, and that meant keeping the grease.

Later on, he might have abandoned the look if it were solely up to him... but since greasy hair was part of his persona when he was a Death Eater, it wouldn't be prudent to abandon it when acting as a spy. It would look too much like some sort of reform, and we can't have anyone suspecting that, can we?

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[iibnf.livejournal.com]

I suspect sheer stubborness might be a big part of it. My parents harped on about my weight my entire life, so I made sure to eat a doughnut every time they nagged. Who knows, every time someone bitched at him to wash his hair, he'd deliberately skip another day.

[triestine.livejournal.com]

I vote for

a) Potions. Having been in Printmaking for five years, I know all about the horror of one's looks after spending hours in a basement lab full of suspicious fumes and nasty substances.

b) Hair like mine, which means having to wash every other day because it only takes one day's work and one night's sleep to make it look, as my mother endearingly puts it, like a cow licked you.

I'll tell you this though. It's a sure sign of insane fandom when you emerge out of your studio after many a sleepless hour, get told your hair looks like a herd of cows confused it for a lollipop, and you take it as a compliment.

Cheers,
Jez

[hagia-sophia.livejournal.com]

I think that "oiled down because it's curly" theory was also used in Morrighan's Long Road to Damascus. But I may be wrong.
There is, however, another popular explanation: Snape doesn't wash his hair because of some emotional trauma associated with it. This theory is used in pigwidgeon37's The Sybil's Oracle, in Adrienne's Perdition, and, I think, in a few other fics.
Personally, I think that Snape has naturally oily hair which has to be washed daily, but he only bothers to wash his head once every few days. My hair, for example, became more oily as I grew up: when I was a teenager I could wash it every two or three days and it would look OK, but now I have to wash it every day. There was a period when I had to remind myself to wash it more often - it was difficult to break that habit. Maybe Snape has hair like that, but still thinks, by habit, that washing it twice a week is enough?

[nike-victory.livejournal.com]

I agree with your theory. My hair is like that too and I can see Snape not bothering to change just because his hair is getting greasier quicker.

[gina-r-snape.livejournal.com]

I must be weird, but I find skinny guys with big noses a major turn-on in real life, not just with Snape.

But the greasy hair will likely never be fully resolved. Sirius, having long flowing beautiful hair in his youth would likely take issue with anyone's hair that was less attractive than his own. But my guess is if Snape's hair was so greasy as to be to distraction, DD would pull him aside and enforce a hygiene standard. We've never ever heard of Snape smelling bad. And, in GoF and OoP at least Snape's hair is described as falling in his face in sheets. If his hair were truly greasy, it would fall in icky clumps, not sheets. So I say it's just very soft and shiny and appears greasy because it's not frizzy or elaborately coiffed.

And yes, it does leave room for lovely shampoo shower scenes in fanfic! :-D

[asphodeline.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, I'm going to add my agreement here. I think Snape's greasy hair is probably just natural but if he really wanted to he has all the (potions ) knowledge to do something about it. No doubt it suits his, nasty, dark, Death Eater persona to keep it that way, he's probably not that bothered. In any case as I well know, it's a huge hassle keeping hair looking great when you have to wash it evry other ( sometimes every ) day. I do like synaesthete7's Snape in the Darkness and Light trilogy where it's deliberate and he does eventually shed the Death Eater look by sorting his teeth and hair. Perhaps with the right encouragement .... who knows?