I got my hair cut last week. Google Docs is flagging the separation between “hair” and “cut,” but Google Docs is wrong, wrong, wrong, because I’m using the word “cut” as a verb. I could have written that I got a haircut last week, and then haircut as one word would be appropriate, as a noun and the object of “got,” but that’s not how I wanted to play that sentence, and Google Docs shouldn’t try to exceed its authority . Unless it wants to write my blog for me. Go ahead, Google Docs. Walk the plank. It’s all yours.
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Anyway, back to the haircut (see Google Docs? I know the difference between "haircut" and "hair cut"). I don’t do very much with my hair. My hair is fairly thick, not quite straight but not quite wavy. I have a few cowlicks, and a few places where the hair turns its own way, no matter what I do to it. I used to have a very simple seven-to-ten minute styling routine, with a blow dryer and a brush. When my hair didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to, I pulled it back into a clip or a headband, and I went on my way.
Then March 2020 hit, and we all came home; some of us for months. I’m still working from home. Without a reason to get dressed and leave the house every day, even my minimal hair routine seemed unnecessary, so I stopped doing it. I showered, washed my hair, combed it, and let it dry however it would. I used the headband and the clip and the hair tie (sometimes all three at once) as needed.
Last year, I was cutting my own hair, and that is not as bad an idea as you might think. It turned out that I could cut my own hair. But I’d rather have a stylist do it, and so now that hair salons are back in business again, I’m happy to turn myself over to the professionals.
My hairstylist is an immigrant from Nicaragua, a 60-year-old lady with an elderly mother who suffers from dementia, two grown daughters (one of whom is also a hairstylist), and a husband who I think is her second husband, and not the father of the two daughters. She talks about her elderly mother a lot. Her mother was a businesswoman, very successful and energetic and capable, and it’s difficult for Angela to see her once-brilliant mother become forgetful and almost helpless. LIke many people with dementia, Angela’s mother has good days and bad days. On good days, she remembers Angela, and she talks about business and current events and family and friends. On bad days, she forgets who she is, and she forgets her daughter’s name, and she demands to be taken home, to houses where she lived in other cities, many years ago. It’s sad for Angela and it must be frightening for her mother. But Angela goes on about her life and her work. She takes care of the people she needs to take care of, and she cuts and styles and colors hair, and she laughs at my jokes.
Angela works in a salon that has a large elderly clientele. The salon is in the shopping center attached to the Leisure World retirement village, which is a pretty huge complex of high-rise apartment buildings, low-rise garden-style apartments, tiny one-story cottages, and an assisted living center. Every time I go to the salon, I see maybe one other person younger than 65, but they cater mostly to very old ladies, the kind who get their hair washed and set once a week.
A very tiny old lady in a wheelchair, wheeled by another tiny lady, a few years younger than herself, was in the salon for her first haircut since the pandemic began. Her fluffy, slightly yellowed white hair was piled atop her head like buttercream frosting on a slightly desiccated but still-sweet cupcake. The lady and her companion talked loudly, as old people tend to do. One of them got the Pfizer vaccine and one got the Moderna. Both ladies were getting haircuts. The lady in the wheelchair was having her hair cut short and her companion was getting her stylish little bob trimmed and styled. They chattered with excitement, happy to be out of the house and happy to return to their normal weekly beauty routines. Old ladies like to be pretty, too. And why shouldn’t they?
The very old lady had very specific instructions about how much length she wanted to cut, and how she wanted her hair shaped and styled. And again, why shouldn’t she? It’s her hair, which she has to live with. Her stylist listened patiently, nodding her head and asking questions. But the client at the next station felt moved for some reason to comment. “She knows just what she wants, doesn’t she?” The neighboring client’s stylist nodded. “Oh yes, she does, and she’s not afraid to tell us, is she? Good for her.”
Good for her? First of all, neither of these women seemed to understand that talking about a person who is 18 inches away from them as if she’s in another state is inexcusably rude. And their amused surprise at the idea that an old person should express her own opinion about her own hair that she is paying money to have cut and styled was downright offensive, and not just because I myself expect to be a very old lady myself someday. It was just upsetting to see the lack of simple manners, and simple respect for another person’s dignity.
The very old lady either didn’t hear these idiots or she wisely chose not to acknowledge their presence in her vicinity and their unnecessary comments on her demeanor. She sat straight up in her chair and watched calmly in the mirror as her stylist brushed out her fluffy yellow-white hair and began snipping off a year’s growth.
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When I arrived for my appointment, my stylist was finishing with her earlier client, and she handed me over to the very capable salon assistant, who washed and conditioned my hair. I love having someone else wash my hair. It’s lovely. The assistant was lovely, too. She complimented my handbag, and she told me that I have beautiful hair. She was perfectly right about the handbag, for which I can take no credit other than for my own good taste.
The “beautiful hair” remark was sheer flattery. I have hair, is what I have. It’s neither beautiful nor ugly. It’s nothing special; especially with my styling routine, which as we have established, consists of almost nothing. Sometimes I see a woman with flawlessly cut, beautifully colored, and perfectly styled hair and I think “Hmm. Maybe I should make more of an effort. Maybe I should try to have amazing hair.” But then I think about the work that it would take to achieve and maintain hair excellence, and I realize that this effort would put an unacceptable burden on my life, and I pull out my trusty clips and headbands. I’m not a #hairgoals kind of woman.
The older I get, the more I care about living and the less I care about how I look when I'm doing it. That is not to say that I don’t care at all about appearance, and should you ever hear me claim not to care one bit about how I look, you can call me out as a liar, because that will be a lie. I wish I didn’t care at all but I do. But after 50 plus years, I think I have reached a point at which my concern for my appearance and my anxiety about what others think when they look at me are manageable.
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My hair turned out fine. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted because I wanted something very slightly different from my usual haircut and I think that maybe Angela was afraid for me; afraid that I thought I was ready for something new but that I’m really not, and so she just decided to take the safe route and cut my hair the same way that she usually cuts it. I have had some really bad haircuts in my time, and I do tend to project fear when I sit down in a stylist’s chair.
The very old lady was still in her chair when I left, her once-long, still-wet yellowish white hair now shaped into a chin-length bob. She seemed quite happy, and I wish I could have stayed to see the final dried and styled result. If I knew the lady’s name, I’d try to find her on Instagram, to see if she posted a selfie. Hashtag: #shorthairdontcare.
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