Superbadcuts
I do some girly things like get pedicures and get my eyebrows waxed and my bike is a women’s bike which means, only, that its skeleton of metal is such that it allows girls with skirts to ride without opening their legs too far. My handwriting is kind of lavish, my comforter has flowers on it, I’ve read all of Jodi Picoult’s novels. These things make me a girl, and I state them only because the next admission is something that might cause some to question my gender roles:
I get my hair cut at Supercuts.
Most girls get their hair cut at fancy places. Salons. They have a place that probably smells like burning potpourri, has warm towels in the bathroom and a nice little tinkling waterfall behind the check-in desk where, chances are, there is a pleasantly-busted blonde girl who doesn’t even need a name tag sitting, waiting patiently for them to enter. They have a “my hair lady.” They get their hair colored, highlighted, permed, coddled, cuddled, snuggled, wrapped, hugged, kissed, curled, woven.
But when you go to Supercuts, you get something different. You get an automated check-in system. You get a rack of magazines from 2004 with names like HAIRBIZ and GOLF TIMES, and if you’re lucky enough to find a copy of People, its pages are probably half-ripped out, the perfume ads have visible signs of being rubbed previously on some reader’s skin and if the cover is still in tact, its date will pronounce its publication as being pre Brad ‘n’ Jen. The people cutting your hair are named things like Angel and Star and Keisa, and in the south, coolly enough, they add a “Miss” in front of their name. So now you’re entrusting a total stranger named Miss Hope or Miss Molly with a sharp pair of scissors and the back of your neck. These aren’t good things. They’re not super. It’s just the way it goes when globalization meets personal grooming.
At Supercuts, you get to see them sweep up your hair into a big garbage pile of reject follicles, and are forced to wonder the stories behind all the different shades and shavings that listlessly float about the floor. You get a quick cut, usually some snippets of stories from your hair dresser’s life that you could easily do without, 20-minutes of stagnancy in a raised swivel chair in front of a crystal clean mirror.
The thing is, I never am happy with getting my hair cut. I always climb out of that chair with nostalgia, looking longingly towards the little pile of brown that’s gathered at the base. That’s me, little dark brown reminders of what I used to be. On the floor.
What is it about getting our hair cut that makes us feel some inexplicable connectedness back towards the hair we just lost? The finality in haircuts is more symbolic than we give it credit for, and maybe that’s the most positive attribute of the nicer salons. You never see scrap, reject, dejected, lost, lonely hair follicles on the floor in fancy salons. They make a point to clean them up fast. Instead of letting the old linger around, they focus on doing up your new do, making the present you pretty instead of allowing you the opportunity to see the past you on the ground, all cut up and choppy. But at Supercuts, perhaps a policy dictated by the need to be efficient, they don’t clean up after each hair cut. Instead, they let it collect, like leaves in the fall after many windy weekends; it’s much easier to sweep it all together once. His and hers and yours and theirs. All different colors and lengths, a farrago of follicles.
Yesterday, I got a disastrous cut (that was hardly super by any definition of the word). It was $12.95. And horrible. I swore that I’d never go into Supercuts again (this is a sentiment I have experienced many, many times before). But what’s the alternative to getting a bad, cheap haircut? Spending fifty bucks at a nice place. And I just cannot justify in my mind dropping that much money for someone to take away something that I like.
Haircuts are strange things. People who like getting their hair cuts mostly, I think, are fond of the notion of being pampered more than they are fond of the idea of chopping and trimming and cutting. Because they are so final and severe; there’s no turning back with a hair cut. And despite the fact that Supercuts blows and (for girls at least) hardly qualifies for a pampering experience, going there does represent an exercise in trust development. Because you’re trusting a stranger. But more importantly, you’re trusting the fact that you’re comfortable enough in yourself to shed a whole layer (months, really) and live without a tangible product of your physical growth and development.
