When one starts a thorough study of the hair, it?s hard to phantom the complexity of each and every single hair. It starts its growth from the follicle emerging from a papilla that is made up of living cells. Here mitosis or cell multiplication occurs to start the formation of the hair. As these multiplied cells receive oxygen and continue to grow, they remain in a soft state while the outer cells become flattened against the follicle wall where they are now known as the hair cuticle. In this state not only have they become flat they are now hard and scaly and have taken on the job of encompassing the hair by overlapping one another.