A Trip to the Hairdresser

Prior to going to Brazil I had cut off most of my hair, that was over nine months ago. As you can imagine my hair has grown quite a lot since then. I don't have a lot of hair length-wise but in terms of volume it is a lot and a little hard to handle considering that I don’t have my personal hairdresser, my sister, or the necessary hair products. The only solution in my book was to get rid of the problem which is my hair. I therefore decided to visit the barber/hairdresser.

~when I just cut my hair a few days before traveling to Brazil~

~over nine months later~

I was not too sure about how my visit to the hairdresser would go. There are many stylists here but most of them are used to handling people with longer hair and with a different texture of hair. And unfortunately, in all the places I have been here I have not been a lot of black people to ask them to recommend a hairdresser. Fortunately in the conference where I had just moved, there were several black people working there. One day one of them took me back to my hotel at the end of the day. On the way there, I asked him where he got his hair cut. He pointed out several salons near the conference so I decided to visit one the following day.

The following day after my last class, I went to visit the closest one, just to do a visual evaluation and to find out the price of getting a cut. I walked into the store and there were only three people there. One of the hairstylists was doing a client’s hair and other stylist was sitting in a chair reading a magazine. As I walked into the salon everybody’s eyes turned to me waiting for me to I guess say something. It took me a while to get my question out because I was having a problem identifying the gender of one the stylist. I was not sure whether the stylist doing the client’s hair was a man or a woman, and he/she looked like the person in charge and hence person I had to talk to. In Portuguese, most of the words are gendered according to the person speaking or addressing. To remedy my predicament I used the formal word for you, voce, rather than polite o senhor or a senhora.

I asked whether they could cut my hair and if they had pictures of the different styles. When I asked to see styles, which was a normal request for barber shops or salons in the states, I got weird looks as if they were saying you don’t have enough hair for us to cut. The stylist in charge, however, motioned for the other stylist to show me some books. The books were not helpful because they were all for people with long hair. I gave them back the books and just asked them the cost of a regular cut and told them I would probably be back the next day.

Out of pure curiosity to find out the gender of the stylist and in spite knowing that the stylist could give me an awful cut I decided to just to get my hair cut my there. I returned to salon the following day. This time only the stylist with the unknown gender and another client. I asked the stylist whether I could get my hair cut that day and I showed a picture of when I had previously cut my hair. The stylist said yes and said I would just have to wait a little.

While I waited, all three of us started talking. My accent is usually a point of departure for many of my conversations with Brazilians. They are always curious to know why I am in Brazil and where I am from. During the conversation, the other client made references to the stylist and as a result I was able to confirm the stylist gender. The conversation I had with the stylist was very interesting. The stylist asked me out of the blue if I was Seventh-Day Adventist. I was curious to know how the stylist had come to that conclusion. The stylist's response was that I looked like an Adventist. The stylist also had had a uncle who was Adventist.

So the other thing about the cut that was interesting was the fact that the stylist was somewhat afraid it seemed to cut my hair. In my experience stylists tend to be scissors happy. I think I may have been the first black person who had visited the salon wanting to cut off most of her/his hair. The stylist kept telling me I had good hair and that I should get a perm. I couldn’t be convinced. The stylist started to cut my hair with a small pair of scissors with much difficulty, as you can imagine. Later, I suggested the use of a shear, the stylist was a little skeptical. I had to keep telling the stylist to cut more off. At the end of the cut, my hair was not a short as I had wanted but nevertheless it was shorter and more manageable. I think the stylist did a good job in spite of the initial hesitancy.

~after my haircut~

What I have noted however is that in Brazil, hair is an integral part of a woman's beauty. This I guess was the reason for the reluctance on the part of the stylist to cut my hair.

~me and the stylist, Eddy~