Hairdressing - Old School Therapy

What kind of person tells another person about their one night stand booty call that ended up with a pregnancy and a bout of chlamydia (condoms people, come on)? Oh, and I forgot to note, mentions this whilst the person is eye level with their vagina, applying a spray tan? Beauty salon customers, that’s who.

They also show the hairdresser their pics with filters (because I’m sure she really wants to see them), they look bamboozled and throw a tantrum when the hairdresser can’t change their hair from black to blonde in one day (I mean Kim Kardashian can do it, so why can’t I), turn up late and then try to rush a huge job into an impossible time period because they have to get the kids from school and try and book a last minute Christmas appointment and refuse to leave when the hairdresser says “we’ve been booked for months” (oh, but it’s only a few foils). So basically, we’ve established that people who go to the beauty salon can be bitches.

Earlier this week I went to the hairdresser (hence this post). I’m still deciding if I’m one of the bitches or not. I love going to the hairdresser. Ah, the relaxing, peaceful, pampering that happens when I step into the salon. I have to wonder if there is actually anything better than getting a fresh cut and colour, and a wonderful head massage (seriously, how great are they), all whilst sitting and relaxing and forgetting about the time?

Perhaps, it’s all of this, PLUS the added excitement of everyone losing their inhibitions and oversharing to the hairdresser for your listening pleasure. So many people expect too much from their hairdresser, and I wonder if expecting them to be your personal therapist is where we should be drawing the line.

My hairdresser is a friend, so pretty much anything is fair game, however it’s amazing how much someone is willing to share when they enter a hair salon. Their whole life is exposed to both their hairdresser as well as everyone else in the salon at the same time. You may not know the person’s name, but you know that they’ve been in hospital recently, or that their mother-in-law is difficult to get along with, or that they’re considering leaving their partner. You even find about those early pregnancies, or those work issues, or some other strange secret. Their affairs are out in the open, that time they went to jail is just casual conversation, or the fact that they’re hiding this pampering from their husband by purchasing visa gift cards when they do their shopping to make the payment (I guess it’s true that men really don’t notice when you’ve been to the hairdresser).

The possibilities are endless when you step into that salon. In the walls of a salon anything goes, and because they put it all out there, it’s easy, as another client in the salon, to comment on another person’s life and offer some advice (girl, you need to kick him to the kerb), whilst you’re sitting nearby with your colour on, even though they’re a stranger and you only met them half an hour ago.

But why? Barmaids hearing everything makes complete sense, we’ve all done and shared stupid shit whilst under the influence of alcohol. But hairdressers? I mean they put sharp objects to your head repeatedly. If you get your eyebrows waxed like I do, they could seriously fuck up your face for a while. One would think that you’d be on your best behaviour, and yet, people rarely are. Is there something in the hair dye that breaks through your skull to reveal your innermost secrets? Or perhaps it’s only certain colours that trigger the oversharing? Like if you choose brown number 63 you’ll share too much, but brown number 85 means you’ll somehow restrain yourself form the oversharing mess.

All I know is that bitches are why I’ll never be a hairdresser (that and the fact that my only experience was the great self-cutting fringe fuck up of 1996), and over-sharers whilst hilarious a lot of the time, would eventually have me telling someone that I don’t want to see a “fucking picture of them with a sepia filter because I really don’t give a shit”, so probably best I avoid the profession.