This was published 3 years ago
Two minutes with Danny Katz: When your hairdresser goes off piste
I’ve started going to a new hairdresser. Things were fine at first, but I’ve noticed she’s cutting my hair to look like hers. No matter how many times I mention that I don’t part it on that side, she still does it. This salon is convenient. How can I gently bring this to her attention?
C.M., Berwick, Vic
A: There’s a famous piece of writing advice that goes “Write what you know” – and maybe this hairdresser sees herself as a hair-writer. Maybe she’s “cutting what she knows”, using her own personal hair-experiences to inform her hair-narrative (while avoiding overly purple styling or gratuitous shags). Actually, writers and hairdressers have a lot in common; they both spend their days contemplating human heads, they both dabble in layering and texture, and they both cut their own hair because they’re in low-paid professions and can’t afford a hairdresser.
So if that’s why your hairdresser is cutting your hair to look like hers, then it’s actually a compliment. You’re in the hands of a true artist who wants to find emotional honesty in her work rather than just plagiarise the latest, bestselling Gal Gadot side-part. Then again, you might be in the hands of a complete narcissist who thinks her hairstyle is amazing and just wants to share it with the world. A giveaway would be if she finished the cut, held up a mirror to the back of her head and said, “So … happy with that?”
Anyway, if you’re not thrilled about hair-twinning and don’t want to change salons, just guide your hairdresser through every step of the cut like a flight controller helping a passenger land a jumbo: “No, part on the other side … I repeat, part left! No, left, damnit, hard leffffft!!!!!”
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Danny Katz is a columnist for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He writes the Modern Guru column in the Good Weekend magazine. He is also the author of the books Spit the Dummy, Dork Geek Jew and the Little Lunch series for kids.