The question
It may seem trivial what with everything going on during the COVID-19 crisis, but I don’t know what to do about my hair. I’m used to going to a stylist on a regular basis to have it cut and dyed, but now all the salons are closed. My grey roots are showing and my hair is seeming more and more raggedy every day. I’m working from home and do quite a bit of Skyping, teleconferencing and Zoom chatting, and I’m starting to feel like I’m looking less than professional. Help! What can I do?
The answer
I don’t think it’s trivial at all.
This coronavirus situation has affected so many aspects of our everyday lives that I feel we, as humans, will never really, truly, be the same.
We will certainly, it seems to me, never look at things the way we used to.
Just to pluck a random example from the ether: I watch the news, and now whenever I see shots of people congregating in large numbers or mingling at close quarters I think “file footage.”
No masks? Everyone hugging and kissing and shaking hands? How 2019 or earlier.
But onto your question. Hair issues are something I have heard a lot about, anecdotally: Now that every barber and salon is shuttered, what on earth are people supposed to do?
My wife is on TV. She is accustomed to going to a fancy-pants hair place and having a highly trained professional fluff her follicles. Along with her he gazes quizzically into a mirror, and says: “What sort of look would you like to go for this time?”
Her: “Hmm, maybe tousled, but not too tousled. You know what I mean?”
Trained hair professional: “So ‘just tousled enough’?”
Her: “Exactly.”
Then she leans back in her chair and the highly trained (and extremely expensive) professional will go about his or her work.
But all that’s out the window (for now at least). Recently she purchased some hair dye and in the spirit of DIY tackled her tresses herself.
She looks great, in my view. (I keep thinking of Nora Ephron who declared hair dye one of the greatest inventions for women.) But there may come a time when she has to submit herself to my barber-ic ministrations (i.e. allow me to cut her hair), which feels in advance like a dreadful and soon-to-be-regretted mistake.
For myself, well, I’ve been sporting a beard lately. I’m thinking: “If I’m to be cut off from all humanity, should I just go Full Unabomber?”
Maybe so. Larry Charles, one of the original Seinfeld writers and the director of Borat, also looks like an absolute madman who slept under a bridge yet he’s had a great career. He’s worth $100 million! Maybe it’s time for me to channel him and make more money than ever.
In your case, I’d say, you have no choice but to go the DIY route. Do not let your husband or boyfriend – or really any man – in the vicinity of your hair. That is axiomatic.
And let us all mourn the lack of a Flowbee – a device that would attach to your vacuum, then cut and suck up your hair at the same time – in our households.
The Internet, especially these days, is full of tutorials on how to handle/what to do with your hair. Good luck with all that. Stay healthy, try not to go crazy, and happy hair days to everyone.
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