Vanity.

 

 

I always take a book with me when I go to the hairdresser. Certain procedures take some time and I’m happy to read and wait. I had a hairdresser once who thought that was an almost hilarious thing to do. “Oh, you and your book,” she would say in a very patronising way, as if it was a stage I was going through.

One of the reasons I have my book with me is that I can. not. stand. the mirror. If anyone was looking to torture me, that would be the way. Sit me at a huge mirror and make me look at myself for an hour. Half an hour would do it.

Another reason is the small talk. I am not mocking, knocking or disparaging hairdressers here, but the chit-chat required is often excruciating. I’m sure it is for them too, and it repeats itself over and over in their day. Their customers don’t move on after a brief exchange of pleasantries at the cash register.  They sit, they try not to look in the mirror.  How’ve you been, has it been busy, what are you doing at the weekend / for Christmas, isn’t it hot / cold, now what you would like done today, would you like a tea or coffee?

I knew someone once who had her hair “done” every single Friday after work, and she always took a bottle of champagne with her and she and the hairdresser had a drink and discussed their week as the doing took place.

I have had many many hairdressers in my lifetime but not ones I’ve drank champagne with. My own personal favourite was tough and earthy and artistic and knew what to do with my hair so well that people (well, some people) asked me for the name of my hairdresser. I met her once between visits and after I’d done a colour. When I sat in her chair and my hair had got too long she said, “I didn’t recognise you at first the other day. This hair, too long! and this colour! Makes you look shocking. Soooo old!” Another time I’d done a slight trim myself between visits and she held some strands of my hair up and stared until I confessed. “Well, I knew I wouldn’t have cut that,” she said and I loved her even more. But she became mysteriously and shockingly ill, and had to shut up shop.

I went to the hairdresser today. It’s an overdue visit, but I’m economising. Not going without, just spacing the visits out. In other words, there’s a period of time when I look absolutely shocking hair-wise. My hairdresser now is so very young. In fact I can’t quite remember the last time my hair was dressed by anyone close to my age. Where do all the older hairdressers go? I hope to somewhere where they can put their feet up and sit in glorious silence for long periods of time.

My hairdresser is young and unscathing. She does not remark on the state of my hair at all. She is bright and fast and efficient. She says today, what about a bit of contrast colour? What colour do you wear the most? Beside black? Green, I say.

I read one of the stories in Cate Kennedy’s very fine collection, Like a House on Fire. When I come to the end, and Mr Moreton starts to hum “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary”,  I feel a bit teary. I can’t go onto another story, I need to push pause. There are no decent, rubbishy magazines at hand to distract myself with.

My hairdresser, almost finished, whacks some product on my hair and rubs it in. Hairdressers seem to love a bit of product. I have given up saying no! don’t! because by the time I get back home my hair will be as flat and ordinary as always. Product rarely, if ever, makes a difference to my hair. Except for those first minutes, when the hairdresser gets another mirror so you can view the back, too. And you say great, fine, thanks.

Today I look at my hair, styled and pink streaked, and say the right things. I pay the small fortune and leave.

I have been going to hairdressers since my mother let me have my plaits cut off in grade 2. My hair has been cut, coloured, bleached, streaked,  permed,  and dragged through a rubber cap with a crotchet hook for tipping. Hairdressers have come and gone. So have I. Economics, family, illness, incidents and accidents have forced new choices.

And today, like just about every other occasion I’ve sat in the hairdresser’s chair, I catch sight of myself in a shop window later in the day and want to gasp and weep out loudly.

First world problem I know, I know. But dear gods,  I look terrible.