Submitted by toenails on Mon, 2007-06-11 15:54.
I set my hair on fire today. Deliberately.

Let me explain- I did this for two reasons: The first was to see what would happen (for reasons I won't go into, I had managed to get a fine coating of butane in my hair, which creates a nice whumph effect in some shots), and the second was to when I told a small fib to a friend recovering from hospital. I told him it was nothing, and that I had set my hair on fire. This not being true, I immediately went about correcting my moral faux pas, going one better and collecting photographic evidence. Here are the results.
This isn't about me being zany or crazy, because I refuse to belief I am anything but perfectly sane- much like Newton would drink mercury and stick stuff in his eye, so too am I embarking on a quest to find out how well fire burns hair. Answer- meh.
Also, ignore the odd look I have. I recently returned from playing tennis, and as a side note I'm not using any kind of hair product- for one it would magnify/dampen flammability and ruin the experiment, and second, my hair sticks like that anyway. The only thing I used was water, in case the butane I was coated in was stronger than I anticipated.
Any potential hair lighting need just one thing- Matches. Hooray for matches!

Lighting up:

The first cautious approach. I had no idea if the fire would take, or whether I'd be engufled in a raging ball of flames and pain:

WHOOMPH! No, I'm just kidding, nothing like that happened, although (probably from the butane) when I set my fringe alight, it creates a nice flaring effect.

As you can see, when the matchstick is plunged deeper into the hair, it loses effectiveness quickly:


Realising the first pictures didn't give a good indication of how deep the flame burnt, I decided to have one last attempt, this time from an angle:

Although it looks like the flame isn't touching, more observant people will notice that the butane has combusted somewhat creating a hot blue flame on my fringe. That one stung.

Finally, I'll introduce my brave stunt crew for this foolhardy experiment- a plater to catch my singed hairs in.

This is just one of many stupid things I've done to myself, althoughn ot always intentionally. Notable experiences include:
stabbing myself in the eye and scratching my cornea with a pair of scissors in primary school.
shoving my hand through my own window out of anger
Setting my hair on fire (accidentally that time)