For 20 years, commentator Debra Jarvis has been dealing with cancer as a hospital chaplain. Last year, she herself was diagnosed with breast cancer. And she quickly discovered whenever she brought up the topic of her diagnosis, all people wanted to talk about was her hair.

Cancer is not about the hair, she says, but it's the first thing people seem to talk about.

"There goes the hair," one friend said to Jarvis just after her diagnosis. She was trying to be light and funny. Jarvis didn't find any humor in the comment -- but she did start to think about the whole preoccupation with hair, and she was able to make some sense of it all.

Cancer is really about death. People die from cancer all the time. But it's impolite to ask, are you going to lose your life? So people ask about the hair.

When we go bald, we are marked. Our bald head shoves death in the face of those around us. People really hate to think about dying, Jarvis says. So they don't ask, what's your prognosis? That would be too nosy and could lead to uncomfortable discussions. It's safer to ask about the hair.

Jarvis concludes that people focus on the hair because it's so hard to talk about fear and pain and grief. But if we can stand to talk about these issues, she says, then when we talk about the hair, it will really be about the hair.