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Naked at the Hair Salon

Becca Stevenson

NAKED AT THE HAIR SALON

I hadn’t known that haircuts could cost more than thirty dollars until I moved to the city for college, and hadn’t bothered to pay more than twenty for a trim until my sophomore year. As a child, my mother gave me the same mushroom cap cut all the Indian kids had until I aged out of the style and into tri-monthly Hair Cuttery trims. It was again time, I decided my sophomore year spring, to age. It was time to put aside the frugality and frumpiness of the budget cuts of my youth and become someone new and someone chic, someone like the New York girls.

I quickly learned, however, that I could not afford to be someone new and chic like the New York girls. The nice salons, in fact, the nice salons listed as “budget-friendly,” seemed to all cost a minimum of a hundred to trim hair of my length. I kept looking, and eventually found a site advertising salon apprentices who were still training to be stylists. They posted much cheaper prices. I found Phil, who worked in Chelsea and would cut my hair for forty. I emailed him and made an appointment for midday Thursday.  

The receptionist greeted me at the door when I entered the salon. She had incredibly sleek, shiny hair, and looked as nonchalant as I aspired to be. She took my temperature, asked my name, and led me to a dressing room.

“Here, I can take your coat,” she said, offering me a soft black robe in exchange. “You can get changed in here. Phil’s ready for you once you’re finished.”

“Right, ok!” I closed the curtain of the changing room, set my bag down, and wondered what on earth the receptionist expected me to do. There were no changing rooms at the Hair Cuttery, and no robes either, just short capes tied at the neck. But this wasn’t the Hair Cuttery, I reasoned, this was a place for classy people. Maybe classy people treated their hair salons the way city people treated their beds: no outside clothes allowed.

I began to feel increasingly uncertain with each layer of clothing I shed, until I was down to my underwear with a sense of despair. With the robe on, I folded my clothes into a neat pile and peaked out the changing room. I tried to spot anyone else getting a haircut, but I was at too steep an angle. I gave up and stepped out, the pile of clothes in hand.

I looked around for the proper place to set them, but there were no clothes lying around, and in the closet where my coat hung were only other coats. I began to feel a pulse of panic as a salon employee passed by.

“Excuse me,” I said to her. “I have a stupid question.”

“Oh, no!” The employee looked at me kindly. “There are no stupid questions!”

“Um.” I patted the clothes in my hand. “Are we supposed to take, like, all our clothes off?”

I saw the salon employee pause, stare at the clothes, and perhaps hold in a laugh. “Are you getting a cut or color?”

“A cut.”

“Well,” she glanced down at the cleavage that peeked through the robe. “We usually recommend that clients remove their shirt when they’re getting a color treatment so it doesn’t stain.”

“Oh, ok,” I said. “Um, I’ll be right back.”

I stepped back in the changing room and quickly re-dressed. But by the time I got to my shirt, I was still confused. I had made an appointment for a cut, but I wasn’t sure if color was complimentary at places like this. Why else, I wondered, would the receptionist have taken me here to get changed? I peeked out the curtain again, but the salon employee was gone. Flummoxed, I stuffed the shirt into my bag.

I walked out into the salon and saw Phil wave at me from the back. The receptionist sat stoically between us. I had seen her glance over as I spoke to the salon employee and knew she had seen my nakedness. I avoided looking at her, instead inspecting the other salon customers as I passed. There was only one, a middle-aged Indian man. He was, I noted, wearing a shirt.

Phil was friendly enough, and made me forget that there was only a bra beneath my robe. He asked me if I had a reference photo for the cut I wanted. I showed a photo of Jennifer Aniston with long hair and long layers.

“What do you like about it?” asked Phil.

What did I like about it? I didn’t know what I liked about it. I didn’t even know you weren’t supposed to get naked at the hair salon.

“Um,” I said. “We both have straight hair?”

Phil gave me a look.

I tried again. “But this cut gives her, like, volume?”

Phil got to work, making polite conversation as he shampooed me and continuing to chat as he began to cut. By the time he started blowing out my hair, I was feeling fatigued from trying to present myself as much smarter and more worldly than I was. Phil, on the other hand, looked increasingly energized as he put product after product in my hair.

He presented a black and gold spray bottle in front of my face. “This is what I’m using. See how it makes that difference in volume?”

I did not. “Oh, wow! Yes.”

“We have it for sale here.”

“Oh, ok.”

“It’s forty dollars,” said Phil.

“God,” said the stylist cutting the Indian man’s hair. “That spray smells so good!”

Phil looked at me sternly. “You said you wanted volume.”

I had indeed said I wanted volume, I thought back dejectedly, but did I really? It seemed I didn’t at all know what I wanted, except maybe to be fully clothed again.

“Ok I’ll take it!” I said.

Phil finished blow drying my hair and I handed him a tip before returning to the receptionist to pay for the cut and the spray. I placed the black and gold bottle down and took out my wallet.

“Do you want to schedule your next appointment today?” asked the receptionist.

“Um, I have to check my calendar first,” I said.

I changed back into my shirt and coat as quickly as I could. I folded the robe neatly and handed it to the receptionist.

It was drizzling as I walked from Chelsea to my dorm. I had no umbrella, so the droplets dampened my hair, destroying the blowout. I kept my head very still so as not to disturb the new cut any further. When I reached my room, I clicked the light on and looked in the mirror. I wanted to send my family a photo, to show them what a real haircut, a New York haircut, looked like. But as I analyzed my reflection, as I ran my fingers from root to tip, I could find no difference from a Hair Cuttery trim, other than that it had cost me twenty dollars more, and several shreds of dignity. I took a photo anyway and sent it to my family, hoping that they would see something in it I no longer could.