The Hair of the Rich

A few years ago, when I was between jobs, I needed a haircut.  My hair is thick and straight, and with the right cut, it can be pretty great.  Trouble was, I was quite poor at the time.  A friend suggested I go to the haircutting school of a famous stylist in Toronto. For $25, I could get a pretty good cut, she said, with the Master himself watching over the pupil.  I was nervous- was I going to come out of there with a pixie cut?  A grandma cut?  Or, my worst fear, the Anchor Lady.  You know, these haircuts:

No offense, lady, but...no.

Just, no.

I was broke, and felt that calling my mother to ask for cash to visit an upscale salon when I was unemployed seemed ill advised, so I bit the bullet and made an appointment for the Academy.

When I got there, the Master himself greeted me, and called over a few students.  He asked me what I wanted.  "Something elegant, but that doesn't require styling, and will still look great", I said (I am not much with a blow drier or a flat iron).
"No problem'" he said.  He started cutting, and said he would then pass off to a few students, but he would continue to instruct them.  This made me nervous.  I pictured having 1/4 of a good haircut, and that did not look well in my imagination.

"You have some cowlicks that make it tricky for the hair to hang straight. These require skilled cutting," the Master said.  He called over a few other students to watch how he worked around my apparently deformed head.  He cut, they watched. This kept on going.  Apparently my freakish hair growth patterns were working to my advantage.  Eventually, he was done, and not a single student had touched my head.  "You got quite a bargain today!" he said sweetly.  And I had; a cut with the Master would have set me back at least ten times what I was paying.  And my hair looked amazing.

I met up with the friend who recommended the place that afternoon.  "Ooh, it's the hair of the rich," she said.  And you know what?  It really was the best haircut I ever had.  I could blow-dry it with no styling tools, and it would somehow fall into this beautiful long bob.  It looked like I had flat-ironed it when I hadn't.  The best part is that it looked great the whole time it grew out.  The changes in length changed the style, but it looked effortlessly fantastic for months.

It proved to be great interview hair, too.  Not long after getting this cut, I scored a job that paid more than I was making as a publicist for a small publishing company (then again, Night Supervisor at McDonald's probably paid more than publishing), and I credit the haircut with giving me some extra confidence.

Even with my new job, I refused to pay full price for the Master to touch up my hair, so I went to one of his salons, and assumed a pupil could give me something similar- just follow what's already there, you know?

No.  I got some dude who spent half the appointment using those "thinning" scissors.  What is the point of having thick hair if some little putz is going to thin it out?  Don't people want thick hair?  I see plenty of commercials for "thickening" shampoos, but i don't think there are any that advertise "your hair will look limp and thin."

Anyway, it looked OK when I left the salon, but the next morning was a disaster.  The thin parts gave my hair a shagged look. Seriously, I looked like this:

How I wish I were kidding.

I called the salon and left a message with the manager.  I am afraid to say that I did actually whine the words "I look like Keith Partridge!"  Of course, I never went back.

The hunt for a new stylist took years, but I have found a few I can trust, depending on what look I'm going for. Right now, after the scare I just lived through where I thought I'd be bald for a year, I am letting it grow nice and long.  After that, who knows. I can tell you this, however- it will be a cold day in hell before I get an Anchor Lady cut.