Why does the simple act of sitting down in a chair to have your hair cut or styled feel like a tonic for the spirits? Maybe it’s because we too often we let the daily grind go to our heads, and it feels good to have the load lightened.
My son needed what he called an ‘emergency haircut,’ just hours before leaving the country to attend school in Germany for a year. ‘Okay,’ I said, impressed that my oldest, who has consistently demonstrated an aversion to shampoo, was suddenly concerned about his appearance. New school, aged 14, in a foreign land. Gotta look good.
And boy, he did. His sister’s jaw dropped when she saw him, with one side of his head shaven almost to the roots, the other side coiffed into a gleaming blonde force-field. Younger sister had to consciously shift her understanding of who her brother was. She flushed, proud of him, as I watched her watching him. He was no longer the smelly older brother, but had transformed into a handsome young man.
Similarly, when a change in my self-image is due and I want to feel better about myself, I always take myself off to the barber. The decision usually takes two or three days to be acted upon. The gentleman who trims my hair is from the Congo, and he operates from a genial salon amongst a swarm of other braiding and barber shops in Mowbray, Cape Town. His cost is R40, as opposed to the eye-watering amount I paid for my son. At least things average out. And I get far more than just a regular trim, perfected with his electric razor.
In the large mirror in front of me I observe the comings and goings of an immigrant community, people whose displaced roots are strengthened by their converse here. Women take hours to weave braids into each other’s hair, talking all the while, even sharing food. Children play on a tatty couch in the corner. A TV is always on. It was here that I watched the Oscar Pistorius trial, as the entire shop railed in unison at his crime. Men, some of them barbers themselves, sometimes sleep in chairs alongside me, while they wait for clients. Some people just come in to say hello, and then leave. Music plays.
This hair-cutting ritual always yields something healing for me, something that changes me. When I enter the salon I am often at the end of a string of grimy days, when my soul has felt shackled, and my face tries to avert its reflection in the mirror. When I leave the salon, freshly shorn, I run my hand along the back of my head and delight in the sheerness of the cut, and enjoy a liberating lightness, a pleasant sharpness, where there was just dullness before.
In the same way, it delights me to be able to recognise that a friend or colleague has cut their hair, and commend them for how they look. It’s an easy thing to say, innocuous and kind. The smile I receive is perhaps testament to the same desire that has moved me to cut my hair: a desire for being new again, for feeling good. Noticing someone satisfies a basic human need we all have, to be seen, to be acknowledged, I feel. Sometimes, you just have to see and acknowledge yourself, first.
I guess that’s why some people use their hair to make statements, to shave it off entirely, or grow it long. Hair always means something. For some, I’m sure, and I will soon count myself among them, a balding head signifies the passing of time, and with it, perhaps insecurity, a loss of hirsute virility. A reckoning with the self awaits, and acceptance of who I am.
One person who seems not to have been afflicted by this self-questioning is my mother. She decided to forego hair colouring, and has worn her hair naturally grey for at least 20 or 30 years. To see older people dye their hair now strikes me as strange. But it is no less valid than cutting it, altering it, and trying something to make new.
I remember when my father arrived home one day, mid-marriage it must have been, with his straight hair in a perm. Yes, this is in the 1970’s, so entirely excusable. My mother shrieked, before promptly having her own hair permed the next day, and dyed purple for good measure. I saw my parents transformed in their love and laughter. It was crazy and fun.
One day I will get a pattern carved into my remaining few strands, standing out against my skull, and perhaps dye it bright yellow. And avoid job interviews, but swim in the ocean, and feel free, and young, and alive and in love with myself again.
Leave a Reply