# What the heck ARE ingrown hairs?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-heck-are-ingrown-hairs/74730>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [August 3, 2001, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-heck-are-ingrown-hairs/74730 "2001-08-03T02:54:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![MonkeyMensch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@MonkeyMensch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MonkeyMensch)\
**Post date:** [August 3, 2001, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-heck-are-ingrown-hairs/74730/1 "2001-08-03T02:54:13Z")

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I have a passing knowledge of anatomy but I have never understood how on God’s Green Earth a hair could possibly lose its way to the surface of the epidermis from a millimeter away! What are they doing? Bumping into the odd bit of sebum or dirt and immediately signalling for a U-turn?

And how come they never seem to happen on my head. Or maybe they do. Yeah, yeah…(Folk-etymology alert!) That’s where the expression _hair-brained_ comes from! The hairs circle back in and  
[Ricardo Montalban]  
…wind themselves around the cerebral cortex. Mind you these are just babies…Pets…  
[/Ricardo Montalban]

What really gives here?

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**Author:** ![IBBen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/85f322/32.png) [@IBBen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IBBen)\
**Post date:** [August 3, 2001, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-heck-are-ingrown-hairs/74730/2 "2001-08-03T03:41:56Z")

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Call me a weirdo but I really like ingrown hairs. I know this eradicates not a shred of ignorance but I feel an overwhelming need to speak out.

Popping a zit is one thing but to extract a long, rather mutant black hair from deep within the epidermis is a challenge. A painful challenge from which one might emerge victorious, hair in hand, or admit failure and develop an infection which might require massive doses of antibiotics.

(did I say that aloud?)

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**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\
**Post date:** [August 3, 2001, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-the-heck-are-ingrown-hairs/74730/3 "2001-08-03T12:43:06Z")

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Hair-brained (I think) actually drives from **Hare** -brained - alluding to the mad behaviour of march hares (boxing with each other in a male-rivalry thing)

Ingrown hairs; I get these from time to time, but it’s usually the result of me having incompletely plucked out a beard hair, I think the blunt, snapped-off end of the hair catches on the skin on it’s way through, but that’s just a WAG.

“What am I doing plucking beard hairs anyway?”, I hear you ask; the answer is [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=74755)

Now, what about ingrowing **hares** eh? - can’t answer that, can you?