The social benefits of hairdressing
I got a fabulous haircut the other day.
Not only did I get tidy, saucy, pink hair out of it, but it involved media interactions outside my usual sphere, which is always a pretty entertaining part of my hair-salon experience. I do not - by conceited and socially awkward choice - interact a lot with "normal" people. I'm a bit better at this now that I work in an actual workplace, but still, my friends, in both virtual and physical spaces, are delightfully weird in various shades that complement my own oddities. Our media and issues and people of interest do not often coincide with those of the mainstream. So my two hours in the hairdresser are often an interesting window on a completely different world.
This window was particularly entertaining.
For starters, the previous customer at my station had obviously been a guy, because there was a stack of car, sport and GQ magazines already there when I sat down. Hugh Jackman was on the GQ cover, so I picked it up, curious as to what the men's media approach to him might be.
By the time my hair colour was done, I had read that whole magazine cover-to-cover. It was riveting. Not just the articles, though there was this amazing piece on the international life-hacking/modding subculture, but the whole approach. It was the "fifty most whatever men of the year" issue, and going through who the fifty were, but also the whys and comments, was so interesting. There was a heavy line on the way a proper man should live his life. An emphasis on making decisions that mean something, on self-possession and -awareness, on general awareness, on humility and generosity and kindmess. On so many of the men on the list, the reasons basically stated, "This is a man you should emulate, because he exhibits these qualities of a sterling human being."
They also practically all said, "Plus he dresses so well, look at these style choices, this is how he does it, emulate that too."
So yes, I was sort of interested at how precisely like a woman's magazine GQ turned out to be. (In a final giggle-inducing clincher, when I put it back on the stack, it was on top of a Marie Claire, and their spines said, in unison, "Style and substance".) But mostly I was just pleased by the proof that there's a big enough market for be-a-better-man endorsements that there's a whole glossy magazine for it. Yay humanity.
All this time, we were listening to the Smashing Pumpkins. And NIN. And Pearl Jam. When "Smells Like Teen Spirit" started, I said, "Loving the music."
And my darling, 22-year-old hairdresser started gushing about how she was on a total mid-90s kick (which made some sense of her outfit, which had made me double-take when I walked in because I last saw that look in the mirror when I was 15) and she'd been listening to this all-90s internet radio station for two weeks, and reading up on the Seattle scene, and dressing in the style, and she'd been watching all these '90s movies.
"There must be a lot of Winona Ryder in your life," I mused.
This is particularly timely for me, because Triple J are having a '90s week, which we caught bits of in the car... in fact, we sat in the parking garage, running increasingly late for our dinner date, because we weren't leaving the car until "Heroin Girl" finished. I miss grunge guitars. ("Listen to that wash," Mr Dee noted with professional jealousy.) And I have this fervent and starry-eyed hope that, as the response to the synth-heavy late-80s could be considered to be the grunge movement, maybe - just maybe - our near musical future might contain another such reaction. And if my baby hairdresser is getting into the whole period - the sound, the look, the everything - then maybe it actually is pending.
I mean, not that the new Soundgarden is particularly thrilling, but a girl can dream, right?
Originally posted on Dreamwidth
Not only did I get tidy, saucy, pink hair out of it, but it involved media interactions outside my usual sphere, which is always a pretty entertaining part of my hair-salon experience. I do not - by conceited and socially awkward choice - interact a lot with "normal" people. I'm a bit better at this now that I work in an actual workplace, but still, my friends, in both virtual and physical spaces, are delightfully weird in various shades that complement my own oddities. Our media and issues and people of interest do not often coincide with those of the mainstream. So my two hours in the hairdresser are often an interesting window on a completely different world.
This window was particularly entertaining.
For starters, the previous customer at my station had obviously been a guy, because there was a stack of car, sport and GQ magazines already there when I sat down. Hugh Jackman was on the GQ cover, so I picked it up, curious as to what the men's media approach to him might be.
By the time my hair colour was done, I had read that whole magazine cover-to-cover. It was riveting. Not just the articles, though there was this amazing piece on the international life-hacking/modding subculture, but the whole approach. It was the "fifty most whatever men of the year" issue, and going through who the fifty were, but also the whys and comments, was so interesting. There was a heavy line on the way a proper man should live his life. An emphasis on making decisions that mean something, on self-possession and -awareness, on general awareness, on humility and generosity and kindmess. On so many of the men on the list, the reasons basically stated, "This is a man you should emulate, because he exhibits these qualities of a sterling human being."
They also practically all said, "Plus he dresses so well, look at these style choices, this is how he does it, emulate that too."
So yes, I was sort of interested at how precisely like a woman's magazine GQ turned out to be. (In a final giggle-inducing clincher, when I put it back on the stack, it was on top of a Marie Claire, and their spines said, in unison, "Style and substance".) But mostly I was just pleased by the proof that there's a big enough market for be-a-better-man endorsements that there's a whole glossy magazine for it. Yay humanity.
All this time, we were listening to the Smashing Pumpkins. And NIN. And Pearl Jam. When "Smells Like Teen Spirit" started, I said, "Loving the music."
And my darling, 22-year-old hairdresser started gushing about how she was on a total mid-90s kick (which made some sense of her outfit, which had made me double-take when I walked in because I last saw that look in the mirror when I was 15) and she'd been listening to this all-90s internet radio station for two weeks, and reading up on the Seattle scene, and dressing in the style, and she'd been watching all these '90s movies.
"There must be a lot of Winona Ryder in your life," I mused.
This is particularly timely for me, because Triple J are having a '90s week, which we caught bits of in the car... in fact, we sat in the parking garage, running increasingly late for our dinner date, because we weren't leaving the car until "Heroin Girl" finished. I miss grunge guitars. ("Listen to that wash," Mr Dee noted with professional jealousy.) And I have this fervent and starry-eyed hope that, as the response to the synth-heavy late-80s could be considered to be the grunge movement, maybe - just maybe - our near musical future might contain another such reaction. And if my baby hairdresser is getting into the whole period - the sound, the look, the everything - then maybe it actually is pending.
I mean, not that the new Soundgarden is particularly thrilling, but a girl can dream, right?
Originally posted on Dreamwidth