Hair

Go to the barber any day of the week and you might get a decent conversation and a few laughs out of your 10- to 30-minute hair cut, but go to Adams Elementary School for a trim and you might get more than 100 cheering children rooting you on as your locks get snipped. That is exactly what happened Monday afternoon when 21 students and three adults decided to have their hair cut and donated to Locks of Love, a charity that creates and sells hair pieces for children with cancer or alopecia, a disease in which children permanently lose all their hair.

Richard Dunn NEWPORT BEACH - When you see Staciana Stitts walk confidently alongside a swimming pool, your first reaction is to think about dedication. Here's a swimmer who is completely bald. A female. She has no body hair. One's athletic instinct is to believe she has shaved to render a hydrodynamic advantage as she prepares for the U.S. Olympic swimming trials. But Stitts, 18, is always this way. And has been since age 12, when her hair started falling out. "I was just brushing my hair one night," Stitts said, "and it kept coming out of my brush and hair was on my pillow that night.

Two weeks ago Kimberly Stotmore found herself accosted for her shaved head. A man grabbed Stotmore as she walked to her car in the parking lot of Santa Ana College and accused the mother of two of being a skinhead. Stotmore, also an 18-year nurse, tried to explain that her lack of hair was merely the result of chemo treatments she recently completed while combating breast cancer. “He didn’t believe I had cancer, he didn’t want to believe me,” Stotmore said.

Super-powered female icons Wonder Woman and Supergirl are inspiring for more than their ability to fly and fight crime. They also have fantastic hair. SAS Shampoo & Style owner Monica Ruggieri knows that a great hairstyle is more than an expression of vanity. Great hair has the ability to transform a woman's attitude and sense of confidence. "When you've had your hair done, it makes you feel better all day long," Ruggieri said Monday while standing in the all-new blow-dry salon on East 17th Street.

Melinda Fischer, 13, was nervous as she rode with her mom to the posh Vogue Salon in Newport Beach for her first cut in a full-blown salon. But after Vogue's artistic director Donato Bianchini cut off more than 10 inches of her brown hair, Melinda said it was worth it. Today Melinda and mom Edie Fischer of Newport plan to send her braid of hair to Locks of Love, a nonprofit that helps provide wigs to children with cancer ( locksoflove.org...

Editor's note: Staff writer Mona Shadia has gotten used to fielding questions about Islam and Middle Eastern culture in our newsroom. Whether it's fasting during Ramadan, Eid, hijabs in the workplace, the Irvine 11 or the Arab Spring, Mona has educated her co - workers (and bosses) about her faith and experiences. Those conversations led us to realize how little some Americans understand about Islam and the Middle Easterners who live among us in this era of Islamophobia in America.

With Tina Fey’s turn as Gov. Sarah Palin on “Saturday Night Live” creating a stir — in part due to her spot-on bouffant wig — we thought it was time to check in with Christopher Hall, the owner of the wildly popular Splitends salon in Costa Mesa. The salon will appear at 5 tonight on the Style Network’s “Split Ends” reality TV show.   What is the most common color or style that people are requesting now?

It's safe to say the football is secure with Talalelei Teaupa. The day after he plays tailback for Newport Harbor High on Friday nights, the 17-year-old plays with a knife on fire. Holding onto the ball is easy when compared to how Teaupa handles a machete engulfed in flames at each end. Teaupa is a Samoan fire knife dancer on the weekends. You've probably seen one before if you've been to a luau in Hawaii. Picture a bare-chested dancer twirling, throwing and catching a flaming knife and that's Teaupa.

Any parent or teacher will tell you you have to be very careful about what you say around kids. The situation is so bad that for years, teachers have had an unwritten rule about kids acting like magpies. They say to parents, “I’ll believe half of what your kid says about you if you believe half of what they say about me.” But in the case of Sterling Gates, a student at Adams Elementary School in Costa Mesa, he is to be commended for accurately repeating what his fifth-grade teacher, Alison Walske, said.

Need a haircut? I always do. But if you need one, get yourself down to Hampton Salon, on Bayside Circle in Newport Beach by 4 p.m. today. It's important. Every hair that ends up underfoot at Hampton Salon today will be sacrificed for a very good cause — to benefit Containers of Hope, a Christian nonprofit that provides food and school supplies to kids around the world. The event is called "Cuts for Change," and not only do you get a perfect trim but it's way too cheap to stay home.