Hairdressers are the place of transformation.
You walk in, lustful to change how you look, how you’re perceived, desperate for a revolutionizing cut or colour, be that the half inch off the bottom ends- where when people see you, they force out a smile and pretend like you look like a completely different person to satisfy your need for disruptive alteration- or a neon pink buzzcut- where your friends and lovers are forced to take a step back and inadvertently gulp down a scream of momentary horror while their eyes betray apparent validation and happiness, that you have ‘finally found yourself’ and feel ‘completely, absolutely, super-duper happy with your looks’. Excuse my cliché-based sarcasm; sometimes, haircuts are but a routine, carefully sought out to stabilize (the fur surrounding) one’s brain, maybe the only way to calm the buzz of life’s bees. There comes to mind the elderly woman, dressed in cream-coloured pants, a timeless sweater, a high-end handbag, who gets a haircut, a mere trim at that, and an airy eighties blowout, reminiscent of her youth and her once so luscious long hair. She steps out of the hairdresser’s, a satisfied smile indicating her contentment with her touch-up, and is bound to come back next month, until the end of her time. Of course, I could have taken the average grandpa, laid-back, magazine in one hand, a smoking pipe in the other, as an example for periodic and satisfactory haircuts, but they often do lack the necessary hair for the haircut.
Really, the change doesn’t happen when you step out of the hairdresser, having spent an inordinate amount of money for shampoo that makes your scalp scratch, water which found its way into your earhole and half an inch- barely noticeable-, but it happens the moment you decide to book the appointment. Whether you’ve pondered with the thought of a haircut for months, letting the sweet ice-cream flavoured neon pink melt on the tongue of your prefrontal cortex*, or decide it in the spur of the moment, because, hey, hair will grow back, and life is short. You embrace the change the very second, you’ve put your phone down; You take a deep breath, feel the tingling excitement of the scary unknown, the rush of an unfamiliar, new appearance, that will meet a transient alter ego, take a deep breath, and wait with fizzling excitement the day of the snip.
I believe by now you must have noticed that my observations are not very transcendental, nor revolutionary** or of exceptional diversity, but rather based on repetitive recurrence and ordinary observations. I am not a hairdresser as some of you might presume, nor am I related to one- if any of you might have thought that I put the thoughts of one into writing with the objective of immortalizing their precious considerations-, I am not the goldfish in the aquarium, meant to comfortize and exoticize the place of hair-burial sites, I am not an omniscient*** being or entity who is ridiculing the vanity of human existence.
I am the fallen hair you think twice about and then never again. You mourn my being/ me when I am seized by the evil- but freeing- scissors, you may watch me fall onto the floor, heavy and wet, you may tune out the realization of your spur-of-the-moment decision, but in the end, you are all the same. Your busy mind does not hold the spatial capacity for brushed away, dead, useless pili****. Yes, keep on wondering, how hair- for some inanimate, for others biologically active- has the linguistic proprieties of a human, how it can put emotions into the same words you use. I will abstain from uncovering the mysteries of the equivocality of the borders of anthropological language. By now, you might have noticed my weakness for amateurish verbalism. I am but a simple strand of hair and my wish is to tell you about the beauty and horror of life. Sounds dramatic, doesn’t it? Well, if you’ve been living life, you should know that is anything but dramatic but rather an underwhelming euphemism.
I’ve taken many different forms during my multi-faceted, various existences of which many have marked me deeply*****. I’d like to share with you, the first haircut.
Many children cry at the sight of a sharp scissor, at the thought of change and losing a part of themselves they never thought possible cut off without feeling excruciating pain. Many parents have to make their little princes and princesses sit down on the alien iron throne, forcing their frail arms and brittle legs, letting their tears flow down on the floor where in just in a few minutes their hair (me) will lie. I find it quite insulting how fast a child will switch up on you. One moment, they will fight of their own flesh and blood to protect you, cry tears of anguish and agony (in their eyes a battle they cannot lose or else), and the next, under the calming, oozing effects of endorphins and oxytocin (a natural result of the tear-filled eyes, snot-filled nose combination), they give into the blade and surrender. Chip, chop, I am off, gone, and they happily jump up and down (oh jolly). I remember myself as gold-blond locks, fated to never return, I see the mothers and fathers as they watch their child’s pure hair feather down. Yes, being the subject of the first ever haircut is both an immensely tiring and a to the core heart-touching experience.
And of course, having spoken of the first, the last is near of sight. The grandma with the cream-coloured pants has now sadly perished and has been put into a casket by a long overdue, hairless grandpa. Her hair, flat and grey needs to be washed and styled one last time (then displayed because, in fact, grandma cream-pants is Irish and will be attending her own wake) before she is put to eternal rest. So yes, I am cut of one last time and never again, trimmed, but this time with extra care and extra love, for nothing will ever grow back again and don’t we want the worms to find her pretty? People seem to care more for things that aren’t anymore. Once what was before your eyes is gone, you start to notice you possessed the ability to see all along.
Another one of my marking embodiments has been witnessing how I will not be coming back for a while. Not a definite adieu but a temporary choice, one that will pain the hands of the cutting, the eyes of the cut, and the hearts of everyone around you. A loved one (tears and snot, my faithful companions) shaving of what is left after three weeks of needles and cold, and then, because you care about me so much, you understand what losing me must feel like, and because you care about me so little, because your love knows no bounds and no amount of hair or no-hair will change that, not on them, not on you, you shave your own hair off as well. Do you not cringe at the sight of a cancer-patient undergoing chemotherapy, whose hair is but a real-life reincarnation of Gollum’s? Does your heart not fill with pitiful sorrow when your eyes meet those of an alopecic child? Don’t lie and say you haven’t felt a rare moment of gratefulness for your greasy but present hair, when you thought about a terrible, evil, malevolent illness that could take your beautiful, precious strands from you. I hate how I love to be missed.
And so, I’ve been a myriad of shapes and colours, I’ve been damned as much as I’ve been desired, I’ve been cursed and wished away, longed for each day, I’ve been the subject to many compliments, I’ve been the reason of infatuation and eternal damnation.
My time has come to an end, for I feel myself being swept into the darkness of the black bin (am I compostable material, am I not, the hairdresser’s apprentice still doesn’t know what to do with me), and thus, I must express my most distinguished thankfulness for your time and patience.
Until we are forced to part again through the iron blade, dear reader, yours sincerely, hair******.
* For the non-scientist or non-interested; the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is the decision-making part of the brain
**Not as revolutionary as the neon-pink haircut at least
***For those who do not know Latin or who have lived under a rock, ignorant of the Theodicy; omniscient = all-knowing
****Again, with the Latin, because Socrates said “γν?θι σεαυτ?ν” (or “know thyself”): pili, the plural nominative of pilus, meaning hair
*****For the historians among you, do not tire yourself with beginnings, numbers, and dates; I’ve been and will be.
******the word “hair” is derived from the old English “ha?r” and is of Proto-Germanic (h?ra) and of Proto-West Germanic (h?r) origins.