I go to a hair salon twice a year. Today was a day for the semi-annual events, and I spent about 2 hours with my hairdresser. I like my hairdresser a lot, not only because she is good at what she’s doing, but more importantly, she allows us not to talk. Yes, you read it correctly. We are noticeably quieter than other hairdresser-client pairs. My hairdresser Lisa may be an excellent talker, but I am socially awkward, and after explaining to her what I wanted to be done to my hair, I had nothing else to say. But people around us consistently talked, talked, and talked.
Visiting a hair salon always awakens a little scholar in me, and I feel a strong urge to conduct research on women’s hair salon talk. What do women talk about in hair salons, and what does it mean? Today, I was listening carefully to the conversation from the next chair.
Client: So hot day. I like your dress.
Hairdresser: Oh, thank you. I got it from T.J.Maxx. You know T.J.Maxx moved, and it is right across the street now.
Client: Yeah? Do you like T.J.Maxx?
Hairdresser: Well, it is okay. But one day, my coloring client made a last minute cancellation, and I went there to shop. You know, it is convenient, and it is T.J.Maxx, meaning you can stop shopping at any time.
Client: I never shop at T. J.Maxx.
Hairdresser: Oh, okay. So did you say that your son got married this summer?
Their conversation hopped around from one topic to the other this way. Maybe I am wrong, but when I hear this kind of hair salon talk, I usually observe a pattern and feel bad for the hairdresser. The pattern that I observe is two fold: first, it is usually the hairdresser who initiates conversations and picks a new topic when the conversation that the old topic starts comes to an end. In the example above, when the client shows no interest in T.J.Maxx, the hairdresser quickly switches to a topic that interests her, her son’s wedding. Second, when the client asks a direct question about the hairdresser’s preference or value, the latter usually equivocates. “Well, it is okay” is the most common response. The hairdresser is poised on the fence to go either way, according to what the client thinks.
We all know that service workers, such as hairdressers, gain a significant portion of their wages from tips, and to earn good tips, they do their best to keep their clients entertained. And this is precisely what I want to think about with you today: the expectation to be entertained. We’re all humans, and it is natural that we seek attention from others and feel good when they show interest in us. But, when someone pays attention to us in the expectation of monetary reward, the quality or value of the attention is very much questionable. My argument is that attention that implicates money is offense both to the person who pays attention and to the person who receives it. To the client in the example above, it is pretty obvious that the hairdresser does not really care about her son’s wedding. She just mentions it to fill in the vacuum or to assure to the client that she is taken care of. Okay, this may be empty but there is nothing wrong with it. But an entirely different picture emerges when we look at this harmless or innocuous chit chat from the perspective of the hairdresser. Her job today was to add a new color on the client’s hair. If you observe this process closely, you know that this is hard work. You imaginarily partition the head into hundreds of sections, apply the hair cream on each strand, and fold it in aluminum foil. The smell, repetitiveness, tediousness of the job will drive me crazy, if I do it.
On top of this already exhausting work, the hairdresser tries to entertain the client by talking about topics that honestly, she wouldn’t give a flying fuck. Isn’t it sufficient that the hairdresser colors the hair? Wouldn’t she deserve a fair wage for successfully changing the hair color? Why does she have to go an extra mile to entertain the client? Additionally, we can ask these questions: what if the hairdresser has a bad day? For example, what if her son injured his leg and her heart is all with her son while her body is at work? What if she got a call from her mother’s doctor that her mother is officially diagnosed with a cancer? All kinds of things happen to service workers, and as we are, they are entitled to different emotions. They can’t be always skylark happy. As we sometimes don’t feel like talking, they don’t feel like talking sometimes, either. Given that, I think it is a harsh expectation to ask them to be always happy and ready to talk to us, pay attention to us, and entertain us.
I may be a particularly difficult client at a hair salon, because I don’t talk back much and I don’t seem to be interested in any topic. But I go to a hair salon to get a hair cut. When my hairdresser Lisa cut my hair to the length that I desired, she did her job, and she should be paid for her labor. I paid the amount that I was charged plus 20%, not because she kept me entertained but because, really, she did her job.
Kimchi For Thought 