Saturday, January 12, 2013

Anatomy of a visit to the hairdresser

I view a trip to the hairdressers in the same manner that most people view a trip to the dentist. I don’t enjoy going to the dentist, but I know it’s necessary for health reasons and I’m always the better for it. However, going to the hairdressers fills me with dread. It is not something I view as truly necessary and I never come away feeling good about it.

Evolution (or some form of human-like being we can substitute for Evolution, if you will) has dictated that our hair production is patchy and localised in certain seemingly random areas. And Society (or a set of accumulated and largely-unwritten but fiercely enforced rules we can substitute for Society, if you will) has decreed that hair must be kept at a reasonable length. If you don’t, everybody hates you but doesn’t tell you. All they do is wait until you have it cut and then they say “thank God!” But it’s not God, it’s Society.

There is a long established pattern with me and visiting the hairdressers.

1) You arrive and they look at you like you are dirt until you tell them you have an appointment. Then you get elevated from dirt to an estranged uncle who might be rich and are invited to sit by the glossy but vacuous magazines for a while.

2) Eventually you are invited into a chair not unlike the dentist’s. I’ll use “she” to denote the hairdresser because statistically the hairdresser will be a she, even if it’s a man.

3) From the chair, you tell the hairdresser what you want; she repeats back to you what you want; and then she does what she wants. No matter how explicit you have been about how you want it, that’s not going affect the result. You may as well explain how you want world peace and respect for all humans for the outcome you’ll get.

4) Once she has done what she wants, she shows it off to you and you tell her you like it and pay her more than you do for a visit to the dentist.

The final step is you go home to your wife who berates you, demanding “why in God’s name did you ask for that?”

“It’s not God,” I explain, but she doesn’t want to hear it.