On The Vital Importance of Hairdressers

Are you sitting down? Because in my experience, people are shocked when I tell them: I cut my own hair. In fact, I'm about to do it again. I've done it hundreds of times. There are Reasons I can do it, but because I do it myself, I had never fully appreciated the tremendous impact on society hairdressers have! Based on the depths of desperation on social media vis a vis haircuts, formally genial citizenry are positively freaking out without their hairdressers. It is phenomenal.

In The Hitchhiker's Guide timeline, Douglas Adams puts hairdressers on Golgafrincham Ark Fleet Ship B with all the business consultants, insurance salesmen and PR executives. I fear Mr. Adams may have made a great error. Hairdressers are not among the less useful citizens of the planet. Hairdressers are, in fact, essential and should be on the same grade as psychotherapists for how much they do to help brighten a person's psyche. One of the things psychotherapists suggest when you're depressed is to get a haircut. Maybe the next generation will combine the disciplines and we'll have a whole person: a Psychotherapy/Hairdressing School combo. Everyone gets to go every six weeks to get a combination haircut/therapy session. In a brave new world such a job would exist. These are the ideas Generation X would vote into reality.

When I was little, my mom cut hair at home. In those heady 1970s and 80s, people just opened up their homes as their business. In those days, you could visit a tidy ranch house in the suburbs and drop off a prom dress with the area seamstress. You could sit at a dining room table petting someone else's dog and have your taxes done. And you could visit some young Sicilian lady's kitchen and get a hair cut. She'll give you lemonade, and you'll sit in her paisley kitchen chair that she upholstered herself, with her two grubby kids seated at the table, a small cute boy and an awkward older girl, both busily assembling some Woolworth's arts and crafts project and listening to the adults talk.

I watched my mother clean her combs and scissors while she had a conversation with her customer about what kind of haircut would commence. I watched as she swept a plastic cape around the person's shoulders and tied it around their neck. With every new head, mom wet-combed hair into sections, holding hair with big clips. With her scissors, she went section-by-section, snipping and trimming. Her jeans pockets held combs and scissors, but her greatest tool was her intuition. People loved her cuts so much. There were people who had real money, who drove sports cars and lived in the woods, who would come all the way to Waterbury, CT to get a JoAnna. And I watched every single cut. Mom held hair straight between two fingers, as the scissors in her other hand went zzzp zzzp zzzp and snippety-snip. I liked when she did layers, long locks of hair falling to the floor. When I was older, I swept up the hair.


I'll tell you the only two times I visited a salon. Twice in life I got my hair washed and cut. The first time was in Pelham, NY, during college in the early 1990s. I was walking down the sunny street on a nice day, and I had nothing on my schedule, which felt amazing. On a whim, I went into a hair salon and a very gentle man cut my hair. It was okay. Over twenty years later, a college friend gifted me a haircut when we were on a girls' reunion weekend in Savannah, Georgia. Jenny had booked us all time at a salon, and Lisa got me a haircut. Lisa is appalled that I cut my own hair. I was super grateful to Lisa, but the haircut itself didn't make me spin around and sing or anything. That haircut was fine, too. The guy was nice, and talented. I mean, honestly–it was fine. We all had a good time and that's what counts.

The only person who ever cut my hair in a such a way that made me spin around and sing was my mother. When she cut my hair, I watched her in the mirror she always set up for her customers. She gave me perms, she gave me pixie cuts, she gave me long, shaggy layers. She gave me hair like Dorothy Hamill, Leather Tuskadero and Wendy & Lisa from Prince's band, The Revolution. This went on my whole life until at some point I just took over the task. I probably got help at first, but as far back as I can remember, I could always just kind of do it.

Maybe I would have been better off, and still have my mental health, had I been a hairdresser. Maybe I should have pursued salon dreams, only I never had any. My hairdressing talent aside, there's a big caveat: my hair is the real low-budget superhero here. My hair is incredibly forgiving. Heavy and wavy, it'll hold a curl or it'll comb out in long waves. I've done bangs, I've done long layers. I've colored it many dozens of times. It always comes out how I wanted it. I am very lucky. I cannot thank my hair enough. Especially since I am only just-okay in every other measurement of beauty by today's standards, I'm so happy that at least my hair is outstanding. Even when it gets real big in summer, I still like my hair. Thank you, hair. You're my One Thing.

So I guess what I'm saying is, shout-out to my hair that lets me cut it without the help of a professional hairdresser, but an even bigger shout out to hairdressers, whose absence has really shown what haircuts mean to the mental health of a whole society. During this pandemic, your clientele misses you. What I hope for every hairdresser out there: when this is all over, you enjoy a prosperous, happy life with more respect and more tips than you've ever seen before. ∎

Here is a pile of pictures