Love it
Living in the small, western town of Mancos with its low-key, rural fashion, I’ve come to treasure my quarterly visits to the “Clip-&-Curl,” as I like to call all hair salons. As far as I’m concerned, haircuts are gifts from the good sweet Lord above, heaven-sent mini chair vacations I greatly enjoy for the following reasons:
1. They feel hella good. Usually, a long fingernail-sporting stylist washes my hair like I’m a baby with expensive products I’m too cheap to buy for myself. These little hair baths tend to involve a vigorous scalp massage so divine that I nearly faint.
2. Somebody actually gives a shit. Bless her, my fashion-forward stylist tells me I look like Demi Moore and offers suggestions about how I can enhance the Demi-factor, carefully considering a style that actually leaves me feeling semi-OK looking.
3. I leave looking super fly. I don’t possess any of the accoutrements my stylist uses to tame my freshly-coiffed tresses, but DAMN does a skilled blowout make my hairs look good! After a really bangin’ cut and style, I feel a powerful surge of feminine mystique radiate forth from my lady parts. For the next week or so, until my hair falls back into a limp, greasy equilibrium, I walk around like I own all of your souls.
Having someone – anyone – touch my hairs and scalp, whether they be Paul Mitchell himself or a friend’s mom doing $15 cuts from her garage, it matters not – I loves me a haircut.
— Jaime Becktel
Hate it
Confession: It’s been six years since I paid for a haircut. Yeah, I cut my own hair and not only because I’m a cheap bastard. I used to get so anxious at the thought of a haircut that I would procrastinate until I couldn’t put it off a day longer and then wait three more months before dragging myself in. Here’s why:
1. Strangers. I don’t like people I don’t know touching me for any reason. I don’t want pretty much anyone’s face that close to mine or to hear them breathe or smell anything emanating from their strange pores, and I definitely don’t want anything of theirs brushing up against anything of mine.
2. Childhood. I may have been traumatized from my first haircut. The barber was twice the size of most full-grown humans, and had glasses the size of airplane windows and the biggest set of horse teeth I’ve seen since. I cried ferociously. Things didn’t improve growing up. My dad’s mandated haircuts conveyed one thing: military service, devastating during an era of mullets and Eddie Van Halen.
3. Small talk. I avoid any situation where some dude and I have nothing of substance to say to one another and then pretend to make it seem like we do. I don’t care about sports and you don’t care about my job. The only thing worse: awkward silence. It’s a lose-lose.
Plus, haircuts leave me to the whims of someone brandishing sharp instruments haphazardly around my dear and vulnerable eyes. No thanks.
— David Holub
