Dear Wab: Mujeres shearing their locks in el Norte has gone on longer than you think – and it’s not just the geezers. “During the 1920s, a woman’s decision ‘to bob or not bob’ her hair assumed classic proportions within Mexican families,” wrote University of California, Irvine professor Vicki L. Ruiz in her 1999 book, From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America.

She was specifically talking about young mexicanas following gabacho youth trends to the consternation of their elders, but you can use that same rubric with nuestras mothers and aunts.

I don’t have any empirical data on the number of old ladies with short hair in the U.S. since the AARP isn’t exactly the Pew Hispanic Center of viejitos, but nearly every elderly gabacha the Mexican has ever met, seen or heard about wears their pelo corto.

I’m not a post-menopausal gal, but methinks it has to do with hair loss, a better framing of the wrinkled face, and the creation of an easier platform to dye those pesky grays. Since Mexicans take to American habits like we do to Reconquista, it follows que Mexican ladies copy their gabacho peers.

But why the outrageous hair colores? For once, the Mexican will not dare answer a pregunta, because you just don’t question the logic of your madre, superstition or her insistence that Vicks Vapo-Rub and 7-Up cure everything. You just don’t.

Dear Gabacho: Such ignorance, such stupidity, such lies! Lou Dobbs, was that you?