Odd Hairdressers

Why is it hard to find a good hairdresser? I want a simple “bob” haircut (longer on the sides than the shingled back), which seems to be fairly standard. But apparently not. When I meet a new stylist and make my request for a “bob,” most hem and haw and turn me over to someone who reluctantly takes a stab at my head, usually with strange results.

Throughout the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s, my mother went for her weekly “hair therapy,” as she called it. I never met her hairstylist, but each Saturday, Mom returned home with fresh peroxide, a hardened bouffant shell around her head and a happy mood. Naturally, I grew up expecting that, as an adult, I could depend on regular sessions at a hair salon to cheer me up.

However, I’ve had so many strange experiences, when I venture out for a haircut at a new salon, I quake. Recommended by a friend whose fashionable hair I admire, I visit Hank. He gives his clients fifteen minutes of cutting and monologues about his latest vacation video editing efforts. He charges $100 for the quarter hour which would have been okay if my hair didn’t look like chopped spinach when he’d finished.

Another friend raves about Francois. After another $100, my hair looks exactly the same. Only several tiny wisps were cut, even after I made repeated requests for the “bob” which would have required a major remodel on the back of my head to layer the area that had grown out.

One day, when wandering around a mall, I bravely enter a new salon and meet Candy, who looks nothing like her name.  She’s a kindly, but scrawny older woman with shorn gray hair that sits like a swimming cap atop her head. She dawdles over me with tiny scissors for an hour or more. I lose track of time. When I look in the mirror, I see the desired “bob” style, glory hallelujah! When I ask if she’ll trim a little more in a couple of spots, she’s happy to. I’ve found my stylist. Over the next year, I notice each visit gets longer and longer, until it lasts more than ninety minutes. When I suggest she use a razor on my neck to speed things along, she sounds shocked. “Oh, I couldn’t do that. I don’t use razors, only scissors.” This strikes me as unnecessarily time-consuming, but I’m usually relaxed and don’t mind. 

At the next appointment, I tell Candy I have to leave in forty-five minutes for a doctor’s appointment. She goes into a tailspin, becoming very agitated. Her hands shake. “I don’t think I can do this,” she says. Then she confesses. She has severe OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. She awakes at 4am every morning so she can accomplish her numerous rituals before she comes to work at 10am. I’m shocked. I learn more about OCD. It’s a progressive disease that causes Candy to create evermore rituals, prolonging her haircuts. I now realize what a strain it would be for her to cut my hair in any time under ninety minutes. A few months later, I get a new demanding job and can no longer indulge in the increasing time Candy needs to cut every hair with her small scissors.

Eventually, I try Great Clips, a $15 haircut salon in my neighborhood. There I meet my next stylist who turns out to be a countess. She’s just returned from vacation, two weeks at a Renaissance fair where she is a lady in waiting in the court of the queen. Having participated in these fairs for over two decades, she proudly explains that she’d started as a handmaiden and worked her way up to her current high status. How interesting that becoming an aristocrat can be based on meritocracy. Only in America.

I ask Lady Kim many questions about being a countess. It seems real to her. Regardless, she produces an elegant “bob” and I adore her. I’ll call her anything for such a beautiful haircut. I hope I’ve found my forever hairdresser. But she’s so dedicated to her Renaissance world, I worry she might get promoted there. Queen Kim may not deign to cut hair any longer.


Cate Burns is the author of Libido Tsunami: Awash with the Droll in Life, in which she unearths the ludicrous in the emotional live traps surrounding us — in families, friends and disastrous romances. Get it on Amazon today.