Head Mannequins for Hair Styling and Design
Everyone knows what a Barbie doll looks like - well, maybe everyone except a Berber living in the arid lands of North Africa, but that’s another matter. Little girls play with them, dressing them in fashionable clothing, acting out imaginary stories about Barbie’s relationship with Skipper, her other friends, and Ken. In turn, these dolls inculcate the girls with what society believes are desirable traits. In a sense, Barbie is very related to the little well-dressed dolls Henry IV of France sent to Marie de Medici to keep her updated on the latest in Parisian fashions, the forerunners of today’s modern dress mannequins, shop mannequins, and display mannequins.
Practice Haircutting Done on Surrogates
Today’s modern mannequins are not limited to full-body creations. If you were to take Barbie’s head and enlarge it to life-size, with preternaturally long and smooth hair and all, you’d get an idea of what a hair mannequin looks like. Hair mannequins are basically head models on mounts used in the cosmetological industry for practice. They are commonly fiberglass mannequins or plastic mannequins and usually have a face painted on. They can be adult mannequins or child mannequins and can represent any race or skin color. Their crowning glory may be either human hair (as hard to believe as it is, there is a market for human hair) or artificial hair. They are used to practice any number of cosmetology procedures such as haircutting, perming, dyeing, bonding, and layering. They are also used to practice make-up application. This is a much better proposition than the old method of trying it out on a real person and botching it, leading to an encounter with an irate customer. Hair mannequins are considered to be very good tools for cosmetology.
Features of Hair Mannequins
Some practice mannequins are provided with basic eyes and mouth. Other, more sophisticated products come with eyelashes and better-looking facial features as well. These are often reserved for competitions. To steady them, they are often set into a holder or clamp of some kind. There are also some types of hair-bearing mannequins which are used for practicing massage therapy. These can be extended to include the neck and shoulder area, so the user can practice on them, too.
Head mannequins are not limited to cosmetology. Instrumented versions can also be used to test helmet crashworthiness and ballistics. Mannequin-like heads with changing facial features are used to study how people interact with one another.
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