Why do my beauticians like everything but hair?
Why do my beauticians like everything but hair?
My bad luck with finding the perfect beautician
Writer’s note: This post was first published on Medium’s “Tickled” on June 15, 2020 and will now be permanently housed on Substack’s new “Tickled” column.
Scowling from the hydraulic chair, I was too young to say, “This is some bulls — t.” But my 5-year-old mind knew beauticians weren’t supposed to eat chocolate chip cookies and smoke cigarettes while they did your hair. And my grandmother, the same woman who corrected everyone’s grammar at all times, wouldn’t even bother to correct the Cookie Lady. All I had to do was say “brung,” and my grandmother would hop over the dividing table and lecture me for 30 minutes. But Cigarette Cookie Monster was getting away with second-hand smoke exposure and spilling cookie crumbs while curling my hair. I shook my head and hoped for the best. This was my introduction to beauticians.
While women in social isolation have complained about how they need their hair dyed, permed, snipped for split ends, curled, washed, deep conditioned and pressed, I can do all of the above well. I’m not here to brag about it. I just realized it was the only way to survive my bad luck with beauticians. Some women are loyal to their hair salons for decades, but my worst dates come with better options than my hair tales. I’m not exaggerating, and I’ll prove it.
At some point, my grandmother felt sorry for me with the Cigarette Cookie Lady and took me to slow-as-molasses Anne, a hairstylist around the corner. She was a prettier woman than the smoker, but I was pissed that I was missing Saturday meetings at Girl Scouts to get curly ponytails. I wanted to hang out with my friends and have beat-up hair. My grandmother thought otherwise.
Recommended Read: “Bootleg beauticians ~ BlackTechLogy: Fighting against unlicensed hairstylists, hair damage, hair loss”
She also wouldn’t admit what I knew: sometimes pretty women are evil and Anne was a sadist. She clearly saw an open scratch on the back of my head and put relaxer on my hair anyway. (Black women everywhere know that it’s an absolute no-no to perm hair with an open scratch. And if you’ve seen the 1992 film “Malcolm X,” you know how much wrestling it took to keep me from dumping my head in a toilet bowl or the nearest sink. Yeah, it was that bad.) Not only was Anne a sociopath who didn’t mind small children’s eyes watering up “to get hair straighter,” but a sloth could walk around all of Chicago before she was done with my hair. And she didn’t have any cookies to share with me either. Hard pass.