paying
your bills on time. All else can be forgiven but heaven
help you if you miss your weekly threading session;
you will immediately turn into a hairy, bristly creature
that nobody will ever want to associate socially with.
The beauty parlor also engenders
its own language. Cut, shampoo, and blow dry is simple
enough for even a dullard like me to understand, but
to me, wax was something that candles were made of and
thread was something you used to stitch clothes. For
months I thought my friends were speaking a different
language when they said that they’d been to the
parlor that morning for their “mani” and
“pedi”. And believe me, there is a special
code that only beauticians learn in beauty school when
it comes to hair: texture, weave, volume, shade, and
words like these take on a whole new dimension when
they are uttered within the four walls of the parlor.
Go to any salon and you will feel like you’ve
landed in Japan where even the street signs aren’t
written in English anymore.
Walking into the parlor is a bit
like running the gauntlet in medieval times: every client
there swivels around in their chairs under the hair
dryer and gives you a head-to-toe examination that feels
more intrusive than going through Immigration at JFK.
And you know instinctively what everyone is thinking:
“How could she get out of the house looking like
that?” (The irony is lost on them all…)
It can’t be helped; I do it too whenI’m
the one sitting in the chair getting myself beautified
and some other poor, disheveled creature walks through
the door. We can’t help but compare ourselves
and each other – “My hair looks better than
that – her
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