Hairdressers must be the profession who gets away with the most without getting sued on a daily basis for ruining countless lives - and by this I mean the next 2 months of your life it will take for your hair to recover from the trauma it endured. Furthermore hairdressers must be the most pardoned people out there since we don't forgive anyone else in our lives as much and as many times as we forgive hairdressers in general - and of course I am generalising here, but hey, you're the one who keeps going back to them, right?
Maybe our hairdresser's own hairstyle should already tell us something and be an indication of how far he/she will be prepared to go with YOUR hair since they are obviously fearless when it comes to their own hair. Because it just so happens that there always is a brand new colour/technique/style/product that they feel you absolutely must try. Be adventurous, they say. A change is as good as a holiday and so on and so forth.
What I've learned so far from them: if they say it's something new from Britain, or currently a trend in Britain - stay clear! The British may have given us high tea and Princess Di, but when it comes to styling, decorating, dressing properly and cooking, they still need to go a long way. I am not talking about Jamie Olivier though - he is trying his utmost best to get his people to make edible food but Rome wasn't built in one day, if you catch my drift. The British also think they can hide any dress faux pas by wearing a "fascinator" on their heads. Go princess Beatrice! And Kate Middleton : lose the black eyeliner already - the raccoon wants his look back. And I'm sure I am not making any new friends with this statement, but really, there's no need for her to do her own make-up anymore. The Queen will pay for the make-up artist - her budget's big enough. What I wouldn't give to have my own hairstykist and make-up artist but unfortunately I'm only Queen in my own house and don't have the budget to go with it. Only the Queen and Oprah have that.
Maybe I should veer off the British for now and rather do another piece on them another day - they just get me so riled up when they pretend as if we introduced the class system to the world and everything that goes with it. One question for them: who came up with words like "butler" and "his lordship" and still pays millions of tax dollars to keep the monarchy going?
But back to the hairdressers - you thought there for a moment I lost you...but I didn't. The other thing about them is the fact that as soon as you sit down in their chair, they assume it goes with the territory that they should know about every love you've ever had, and lost, who the black sheep in your family is at the moment and why you think the earth moves and how. And my goodness, the stories THEY tell YOU...a few movies can be made from those!
Which brings me to my current hairdresser. Let's call him Tim. Why not? He does not do small talk. He doesn't chit chat one teeny tiny bit. No invasion of my privacy or personal space. And it's not as if he just doesn't chatter with me, that's just the way he is - as private I guess as I am...I am also one of those people on a long haul flight who can manage not to say more than "hello" and "goodbye" to the stranger sitting next to me - he/she is as strange to me after 11 hours as they were when we started the journey. I know: I am a real fun person. Maybe it's just because I can't see the point in telling you every detail of my life when I'm never going to see you again. I can see the point in doing this if you want to save on a shrink's bill by just spilling it all to someone you'll never see again, but I choose not to. Each to his own, I say.
The one thing though about my hairdresser : he never lets me look into the mirror while he works. As soon as he starts cutting, he turns my chair so that each mirror in the salon is out of my vision, peripheral and otherwise. It's the oddest thing. Imagine going into a dressing room in a clothing store and there's no mirror there. Totally defeats the purpose, right? Maybe he feels that the element of suspense he keeps you in while he's working, heightens the relief you feel when you eventually see the end product and it's not the new trend from London...
What an excellent blog which I enjoyed sooo .. much. In fact it comes as a big consolation to me that my daughters have started to write, which is quite a big step for them, not only from a grammar or literary viewpoint, but much more from the fact that writing makes you so painfully honest and open and veers away from the artificial response of normal verbal communication which is so full of pretense and lies, both from a verbal and insinuated viewpoint, not to talk of the concomitant body language. Your genre is easy and touches the satirical. Good luck !!!!
ReplyDeleteI long for a silent hairdresser! (but Tim is just a tad too far...)
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