The other barber sat up and as he prepared his station I looked around. There were pictures of vintage cars on the walls. A sign that read, "Any Man Can Be A Father, But It Takes Real Men To Be Dads!", old black and white pictures of male barbers with male clients, a poster with vintage male haircuts on it (including the pompadour).
Earlier today while meandering about and in dire agony from my abundant amount of hair (long rat tail tickling my neck to boot) I spotted a classic barber pole.The thing is, barber shops are so man. I don't know how or why in the history of barber shops they became so gender segregated, but, well, they are.
According to the disturbing "The Art of Manliness", the barber shop is "a great activity to do with your father or son. Men need traditions that can help bond them together. Visiting the barbershop with your father or son is a great tradition to begin in your family. Many men have been going to the same barber all their life and have introduced their sons to the same chair and the same barber. What a great way to bond with the men in your life!"
Uh, k. I remember going to our neighborhood barber shop with my brother and dad back when I was just a little "girl" . My mom probably would have gone, too, but she didn't think the barber could cut her hair the way she wanted. She was probably right, since she wanted a more feminine long-hair cut. Despite never being interested in long, feminine cuts as I got older and perceived more and more as "female" the barber shop became less and less welcoming.
The thing is, when did barber shops become so "man-only"? Barbers of former times cut hair and shaved, but they also performed surgery, bloodletting, enemas, and extracted teeth. They were called barber surgeons. According to Wikipedia, "The barber pole red and white in spiral indicated the two crafts, surgery in red and barbering in white... Some of the duties of the barber included neck manipulation, cleaning of ears and scalp, draining of boils, fistula and lancing of cysts with wicks."
On a side note, apparently in some parts of Asia, the barbel pole is also used as a symbol for a brothel. How wily!
Moving on.
So that all happened from way back in the 1000's and on. Then, eventually (according to The Art of Manliness), "The 1880’s to the 1940’s were the golden age for barbershops. During this time, men socialized in all male hangouts, and barbershops rivaled saloons in popularity. Visiting the barbershop was a weekly, and sometimes daily habit. Men would stop in not only for a haircut and a shave, but also to fraternize with friends and chew the fat."
Chew the fat, eh? How dude. My friend, Baloo, told me a story once about how she'd gone in to a Barber Shop for a haircut. Why? Because she wanted a traditional, simple, clean cut - one that isn't just limited to "men". Nothing fancy. But, as she told it, the ambiance was uncomfortable for her. The barber wanted to feminize her cut and clearly had a hard time not doing so. She had been stereotyped as "female" and, therefore, didn't have a comfortable, accepting Barber Shop experience.I hadn't even gone that far. I'd opted for obviously open and gender variant friendly hair cutting environments. Lesbian-owned, friends, gay boys, hipster, the like.
But today? I walked into a Barber Shop for the first time in my adult life. The old-school "man" ambiance became immediately apparent. 50's era music played in the background. A barber in (I'm guessing) his 50s stood cutting his client's hair: a man in his 60s, getting a standard 60-year-old dude cut. I asked, "Walk ins are welcome? Should I just hang out a minute, or?", to which he replied, "Do you want a cut or to hang out?" and I answered, "A cut, of course!" The barber hollered at a man laying down with headphones who I hadn't noticed yet, "Hey, want to give this young man a cut?"
The chair wasn't as modern as I'd become accustomed to. It was antique, for sure. Once he was ready I sat down and he threw a bib on me then asked, "What kind of cut are you aiming for bud?". Bud? I described what I wanted, mostly, "This rat tail is driving me insane. I want it off. Something much, much shorter, for sure. I like my bangs, though. Hold on to those."
As he buzzed my hair (no scissors! woo!), the barber next to us talked about sports this that and the other. I clearly haven't been socialized properly because my barber brought up topics I know nothing about and have never been interested in, in the slightest. At one point he talked about a vintage car he had recently restored and sold. And, to me, everything he was saying about it may as well have been in a foreign language. I caught something about double caliber X something another and throughout the blabber I heard the words "original engine". So I asked, "It had the original engine? Serious?", to which he enthusiastically replied, "It sure did!", then went on with some more details. At some point his phone rang, so he answered and said, "I'm busy right now. Call you back soon?", and once off of the phone asked me, "Bet you know who that was." ("the wife", I'm guessing?), and he chuckled.
Oh my. Madness! A completely different gendered world, entirely! A man-perceived hetero social experience broadcast directly from Planet Zot!
After he cut my hair, he applied shaving cream to the back of my neck. What? There's hair back there now? Enough to be shaved? Serious? After he slathered it on I felt a burning sensation, then he brought out a straight razor and started cleaning up my neck area, like this:
New experience to the max, big time. He then told me, "I'm going to give you an after shave that ladies love. It's called classic vanilla." a.) auto-assumption that I'm attracted to women and b.) an after shave on my neck? He used a paper towel to dab at the area, then applied the after shave. It felt incredible. Then he waved the paper towel a bit to blow the scent around, "Smells good, doesn't it?".
It did.
He also shaved my side burns.
And, once done with the neck/face shave, he pulled a vacuum thing out of nowhere to suck the hair off of me and then whipped out this hand massager thingamabop to, "Relax your back a bit, buddy. You've been sitting here a while."
A hair sucking vacuum? Scent ladies will love? A hand massage gadget? Buddy? What in the. This perceived-as-heterosexual-dude thing is a culture shock for me to the max.
But I entirely loved it. I liked getting a simple, affordable cut without any kind of confusion about how "masculine" or "feminine" to make it. I could do with different conversational topics, but I just got a cut the way I wanted it and a friendly experience, simple said and done. I just wish that, somehow, we could find some old-school barbers who were more "gender variant friendly", so everyone - irrelevant to their perceived gender - could feel welcome. I'm sure they're out there. Perhaps I'll befriend my barber and bring Baloo along some time, break him in a little.
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