An Open Letter to my Hairdresser
Please let me begin by telling you that I understand that you want a muse, someone with flair who you can try out all your exciting new hair ideas. That person, however, is just not me.
So when I say ‘please just a trim’ I mean just a trim: not half my hair shaved, with a new fringe and a ridiculous new colour I swear I didn’t even know existed. I try with all my might to fight my case: begging, pleading, offering my life for a simple cut, but then you look at me. You look with those disappointed eyes: ‘why can’t I have a proper girl, someone with style, someone with a sense of adventure’ they cry to me. So I submit: ‘Actually that’ll look amazing’ I say, smiling through the fear.
Alas things get worse. It’s as if you know my weakness: you offer me all the tea I could drink in a lifetime. It’s only halfway through the first cup that I realise my bladder cannot take much longer, so I sit and wriggle. Stage one: I pray the experience will be over soon. Stage two: I count the ceiling tiles or think about whether I need to run to the shop and get shampoo after, just to distract myself. Stage three: I have a mental breakdown knowing I’m going to look like a cross between Nicki Minaj and a young boy when the whole trauma is over.
By this point you’ve hacked half my hair off and have decided that we need an in depth conversation and should get to know each other on a profoundly higher level. Unfortunately, when the most exciting part of my week is completing a Sudoku, making the perfect cup of tea and putting a ribbon on my cat’s head the conversation tends to dwindle after a minute. Now you’re feeling awkward and I’m thinking I should probably start sky-diving or at the very least get pregnant, so the conversation can last perhaps five minutes rather than one.
Then just as I’m beginning to contemplate whether I’ve died and gone to hell and sitting on this chair will actually be eternal, you say the magic words ‘you’re free to go’, and I sprint out the door, £70 poorer for two hours of excruciating pain.
Not before, of course, you give me that hopeful look, the one suggesting maybe I will one day be your perfect, fashionable muse – and just like that you’ve worked your witchlike powers on me again: I’ve scribbled down my next appointment and will return in less than three months to start the character-building process again.
And now my final plea is this: stop with the eyes, or at least find someone else to entrap.
Your favourite weak-willed customer,
Sofie
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