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full screen If you really can’t bear to talk, the hairdresser will notice. Photo: Jessica Gow/TT
A while ago I went to my very new hairdresser. It’s the second time we’ve seen each other and she should be happy about that. Most people only get one chance and then I take my thin flat fat crap hair to another magician, sorry hairdresser.
There are stakes in this one.
“I want really short bangs,” I said with confidence.
Through the mirror, she kept her professional gaze on mine.
“Are you really sure about that?”
“Please, I’m not sure of anything ever but so what, it’s just hair and bangs grow out so fast, I won’t have to suffer for long.”
She paused and let what I said sink in, then she called it a budget cut.
I interpreted it as budget in the sense “the shorter the bangs, the longer the time between haircuts.” I was a little embarrassed, had I just haggled the price backwards?
More and more hairdressers offers quiet cutting, more and more customers choose it. That is, when booking click on the hairdresser to shut up and leave you alone.
Why?
Young people who are about to step out into adult waters and postpone important conversations because it’s embarrassing, that’s part of it, but the idea is that it should pass. Here in adulthood, we call and book appointments, we say hello to bus drivers and we talk to our hairdressers.
How difficult should it be to sense what the person in the chair wants and needs? If you really can’t bear to talk, the hairdresser will notice.
One button for everything we want and everything we want to avoid. How about a button to select an extra gossipy haircut where I get to hear all about people in town. I want a shameless hairdresser who doesn’t back down from the most malicious bullshit and for this I want a café americano and a nice mint chocolate on a pretty little tray.
By the way, can you book that quiet haircut with a hairdresser you’ve been going to for ten years?
Once booked I hairtalk because I wanted to talk more. “Hairtalk” I read in the list and thought it means a little conversation about my hair before the cut, so smart! Hairtalk is what we do when I show pictures of French top models and ask rhetorical questions like “Why wouldn’t that work on me?” But once I sat in the chair, it turned out that hairtalk is a kind of hair extension.
My new hairdresser leads me to the lounger with the black headboard. Hot water along the hairline, a generous squirt between her hands, she bakes me like dough, she hugs mental illness out of my brain.
“Now you see it’s so nice that the hair on my arms stands up,” I say.
“And”
“It feels a bit revealing to me, like I’ve gained a foothold in front of you.”
My new hairdresser is dying for a silent button.
2023-10-29 23:06:19
#adults #call #talk #hairdresser
