Ok, this may seem odd to ask, as I’m a short haired boy, but how does one use a hair pin or a hair stick?
To clarify, when I say hair pin, I mean the two pronged fork like device about 3 to 5 inches long. And a hair stick is about the same size, but is simply a single thin cilinder, sometimes used in a pare.
Thank you:-)
Like a bobby pin?
You have to have a couple inches of hair to get the pin to stay in. You pull some hair back and pin it to another patch of hair.
And if you want to use sticks (I just use pencils) you have to have enough hair to curl up into a tight bun or ball of some shape, then you stick the stick down in it firmly. I find it helps if you wear 2 sticks because they help support each other.
Hi Lark—Your question isn’t odd, but after looking at hair pins and hair sticks (I’m not familiar with that term) it seems like there are so many kinds that you might be best off if you could post a picture of what you mean.
Here is a picture of a little girl with a bobby pin—which would be called a hair pin here also—in her hair. But 5 inches would be way longer than any bobby pin that I’ve seen, so I’m not sure you are talking about those.
The hair stick that is sometimes used in a “pare”. Pare is another term I’m not familiar with.
Do you know how to search images with google? If you do, maybe you should do that so we can see what you mean. Let us know if you have trouble posting them here, it isn’t hard.
For the record, this is what I mean by bobby pin or hairpin:
And this is what I mean by hair stick:
I like hair sticks better than pins.
When my hair was still really long (did I tell you I got it cut to above shoulder length?), I would often use a pencil to keep mine in a bun too. Trés chic! 
That makes me sad. I don’t believe people should ever cut their hair because…uh…they just shouldn’t.
I’ve also found that shish kabob sticks work well too. 
thanks Cran, That’s just what I wanted to know for the hair sticks
As far as the hair pin, I wasen’t thinking bobby pin, this is more what I hand in mind:
You making them from wood?
Oh, those are pretty. I’m going to leave the instructions to someone else though! 
I mean I can imagine where the hair goes, but not how you would use them so they looked nice once you put them in.
Maybe;-)
Those are CHOPSTICKS!
That always drives me up a wall. If I were a woman with long hair, I’d go around with a knife, fork, and spoon in my bun/chignon/whatever just as a counterstatement on general principles.
“It looks Oriental.” Rubbish. It looks like eating utensils. 
even though I have somewhat long hair - it’s baby fine and I don’t have a lot of it. So most of those “decorative” types of things are off limits for me!
But I would suppose you could use the hair pins in the same way as the hair sticks. I just know if I tried to use them, they’d fall out in the next second.
You have to have hair with enough body and texture for pins of that sort to hold up a bun. Silky, thin hair will slip out.
I have a silver hair thingy I got at the Renaissance Fest–one of the things with the stick which slides through the back–and it clamps tightly enough to hold my hair in an up mess. For a neater sort of bun I’d have to use multiple hairpins (the small metal ones–not bobby pins,) and spray.
Sigh. I have baby fine hair, too. When it was long, it just slithered out from hair sticks. Wearing it up in a bun in the Army and for ballet, it took close to 20 bobby pins at the base to nail it into submission.
Overall I agree with you but for people like me with extremely thin hair, it’s better to cut it short or it just looks messy.
What I cannot abide is the notion that older women should cut their hair short. Where the heck did that come from? I actually saw some idiot’s web site offering beauty advice for older women (this moron considers 40 and over “old”) and he specifically said to cut the hair. I’d like to stick a pencil up that blathering lunatic’s right nostril.
When I was a teen, I wore my hair very long, down to my tuckus. I didn’t want to use hair ties or bobby pins to keep it out of my eyes because I wanted to appear MACHO… so, I used one of these…
… this might partially explain why I nolonger have a lot of (if any) hair on top these days. 
Fly, here we go, agreeing again.
When I was a tyke, I believe that by a certain age it would become a social requirement that I wear short, set hair (as that seemed to be the prevailing style among the 60-70’s version of soccer moms.)
I dreaded my hair’s future for this reason.
Later I realized I could be an older woman with long gray hair in a braid.
Then after four children my hair wasn’t thick enough for a nice braid. Sadness.
I still will never succumb to the old person-short hair notion, though.
Scary isn’t it?
I still will never succumb to the old person-short hair notion, though.
That’s tellin’ 'em. I’m glad there’s some sense in of independence in this country.
I think long gray hair is beautiful.
Yay!!! Thanks for that message, y’all!
My hair is past my waist, still abundant, but it is fine and slippery in texture. To wear it short, mandates that I would have to have a “perm” just to give it any shape at all. I’m 54.
A few years ago, I was going for an interview, and a friend of mine wanted very much for me to wear my hair in a French braid. She even drew a sketch for me, complete with make-up tips and clothing ideas
She actually made an appointment for me at the stylists for a French braid, so I went (I’m a good natured sort) Well, due to the texture of my hair, the braid was slipping out as I walked to my car afterward…
I didn’t tell her, of course. (And I got the position anyway…)
M