I’ve Never Felt Very Comfortable Going to the Hairdressers

Do I have to like my hair and nails being done and chat celebrities to be a real woman?

Photo by Lindsay Cash on Unsplash

There. I’ve said it! If the title is still too oblique, I’ll say it again - I don’t like going to the hairdressers!

When I was wee, a friend and neighbour cut my hair. I didn’t have to think about it. We nipped over en masse to her house. Snip, snip, snip and the job was done.   She even had her own hood hairdryer that my Mum used to sit under with her wave set (curlers for the uninitiated). Eventually, our hairdresser got her own salon - ubiquitously named ‘Curl Up & Dye’ - so we’d all traipse along there instead. I even worked there as a Saturday girl, aged 14 (Thursday evenings after school and all day Saturday, for the princely sum of £10).  I didn’t mind the job too much and was happy going somewhere I felt comfortable, where I didn’t have to explain how I wanted my hair styled, why I can’t use commercial shampoos, or can’t have hairspray or  any other ‘product’ in my hair, where I wasn’t expected to engage in small talk about programmes I don’t watch and beauty regimes that don’t interest me.

When I moved away from home, I was genuinely traumatised by having to find a new hairdresser. I’m not even joking. I have to check I can take my own products to the salon (shampoo, conditioner, colour) explain I don’t really like my head being touched - and certainly not massaged roughly - and work out how to communicate what I want done. There’s usually a ‘weirdo’ alarm that goes off for most hairdressers after about a minute and a half. What have we got here? I mean, who doesn’t like having their hair done? Who doesn’t like being pampered? Hands up. Me for one!   

I’ve found a few hairdressers over the years who don’t think I’m some peculiar specimen of womanhood - or at least they’re don’t let on, if they do - but they’ve been rare and they always leave.  The guy in the little shop on the back road on my way to work, when we first moved to the Highlands. He gave me probably the best haircut I’ve ever had. He understood my not straight, not curly, very fine, frizzy hair. He didn’t attempt to ‘pamper’ me or sell me products. He got the fact that I viewed a visit to the hairdressers only slightly behind a visit to the dentist in my hierarchy of things I have an aversion to. He didn’t talk about TV, celebrities or beauty procedures. It was, if not bliss, at least an experience I didn’t get too worked up about.  And then he moved and I had to find someone else.  Again. Thankfully, we moved shortly after my hairdresser did and a lovely lady, who cut the hair for a neighbour’s Mother, was recommended to me. Better still, she was a mobile hairdresser who came to the house.  No choking smells, no noisy hairdryers - or hairdressers for that matter! It was bliss.  We talked about family, art and animals. We became friends. And then she stopped hairdressing.  Back to square one.

If you follow me on any of my social media channels, you will know that I don’t really have a hairstyle per se. I have my hair cut and then I grow it. On repeat.  When I can’t face trying to find a new hairdresser, I grow it very long indeed!

I always seek out a recommendation, although it doesn’t always work out well. Cue the lady who singed my hair, the salon that refused to let me use my own products, the junior stylist that insisted on pummelling my head like a punch bag, the stylist that cut my hair wonky. I have my fair share of hairdressing horror stories. I think I attract them somehow. Like the people who are afraid of dogs and find that dogs make a beeline for them…

I’ve been going to the same hairdresser now for nearly 10 years. Apart from my childhood hairdresser, it’s a record for me. I seriously think I should be up for an award.  I still dread going.  I worry if I can’t get my usual stylist: will I have to remind them I have my own products? Will I have to explain I don’t want my hair blow dried? Will they cut my hair right? Will I get a headache from the chemical fragrances and hair washing? Will they insist on talking about things I don’t have a clue about?  I am here to tell you that Coiffeur-phobia is real! I mean my hairdresser is lovely and I’m definitely not afraid of her per se, it’s everything surrounding the experience that gives me anxiety.  I can pretty much guarantee I’ll come away with a headache, although also a huge amount of relief that the experience is over for another few months.  My hair grows quickly and I really should go every 6 weeks, but I stretch it out to 8 weeks, or 10, sometimes as much as 3 months. I hack my fringe and attract unspoken scorn. I let my roots come through by inches and gasps of horror are gulped back.

I’ve excelled myself this year. I’ve not been to the hairdressers since December 2023 .  The consequence of a combination of illness, family issues and lack of funds. I’ve not got around to arranging anything. I’ve made and cancelled a couple of appointments and not summoned the courage to sort out my next visit.  My hair is ridiculously long, very unruly and full of split ends. My colour has all but grown out.  Yesterday I cut my own fringe. I have friends who would be horrified!  I’ll have to bite the bullet soon, I know, but it doesn’t get any easier.

I confess that I’ve written this with a degree of levity, although everything I’ve said about my hairdresser anxiety is true.  Over the years, I’ve sometimes been made to feel like a bit of an oddity and very occasionally, as if I’m not a ‘proper’ woman because I dislike having my hair done (or my feet or my nails come to that). I do like to take care of myself and I do this primarily through diet and exercise and cultivating good mental health.  I do like to look OK and despite appearances to the contrary, I do like clothes.  I don’t feel the need to conform to a particular image and never have.  I could get on my soapbox about the fashion and beauty industry, but it may be best to leave that for another day.

As women, we’ve been encouraged to embrace feminism and individuality and freedom and yet so often it is other women who want us to conform to societal stereotypes. Of course, a lot of men do as well, I simply find it strange that women should pressure other women to conform to their own idea of what a woman should be! I want my granddaughters’ generation to be free to embrace busted nails and messy hair; not following fashion; wearing comfortable clothes; not being able to name celebrities; not wanting to conform.  We’ve come so far and yet sometimes I think we’ve come nowhere at all.  If your child wants to wholeheartedly wear pink, be a princess and believe in unicorns, then that’s fine, but they should have a choice.  They don’t need fancy hairstyles, shoes and phones, age 5. They need strong role models who will teach them they can be anything they can dream of being.  Don’t take me the wrong way, there’s nothing wrong with wanting nice hair and nails, wearing nice clothes and looking good, of course not - and I don’t detest hairdressers! I do feel uncomfortable going to them and all the more so when they make it plain that they think I’m not satisfying their idea of what’s appropriate for a woman to look like, enjoy and even think.

Is it just me?

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