No Pob Or Pop, Just Cut The Attitude
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday September 25, 2008
I'VE just visited an alien world, a planet of garish colours, noxious smells and clamorous noise. It's a weird place, but it's probably closer than you think. In spite of its strangeness, I seem drawn there every few months, almost against my will. When I return, it's fair to say that I'm not the same person I was when I left.
What I mean is: I'm back from the hairdressers.What happened to my bland little beauty shop of yore? The one with four beige vinyl barber chairs in a neat line, in full view of the street, and its cheerful jingly bells on the entry door? It was full of happy older women getting their grey hair tinted grey-blue, chatting in gossipy tones to each other and flipping through Women's Weekly under the big hairdryers, all to the cheerful background fluff of local radio. Sometimes men would wander in for a quick clip, too. Shaggy kids got popped into the booster chair for a cut and a lollipop. Now the assumption appears to be that no one outside 13 to 25 deserves to feel comfortable during their haircut and that even those in the target age group should treat a trim like a night at a dance club.Between the throbbing hip hop, the blood-red walls and ceiling, the sulphurous aromas, the vibrating shampoo lounges, the sneering expressions of emaciated models adorning the walls and the young "hair artists" with their weapons-grade fingernails, dressed in black everything, and eyes made up to resemble raccoons or pandas - oh man, I really don't belong. I may be a few decades off retirement age yet, but I'm utterly intimidated by the hairdressers these days. I don't want to look like a Vogue magazine spread and I don't want black, green or pink streaks; I just want my fringe out of my eyes! So where do those older ladies and I get our hair done in the 21st century? Do old ladies do as I do, venturing timidly into places like my local salon and fidgeting under the cape, declining "new looks" and making small talk until they're permitted to leave? Are they as uncomfortable as I am with the sales pitch for a $30 jar of "hair product" with a $100 tint job? Do other ladies find that, instead of relaxing, they tense up at the disquieting sensations rattling across their buttocks from the massaging shampoo chair?Call me an old lady if you must, but really, all I'm after is a little trim off the attitude, please.
© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald