Sunday, January 28, 2007

The Role of the Hairdresser

One of my favorite books (about hair) is "Big Hair" by Grant McCracken, Anthropologist. I'd like to quote some of this book for my first entry. Ideally, most of this blog will be a photo blog - but like I said, it's in the works. Instead, something to meditate on:

"It's time for the hairdresser to leave the prison of sterotypes and slam the door behind him. Time to throw off all those stupid ideas about hairdressers being flighty, irresponsible, insubstantial and dim.

And this is the time for hairdressers to throw off their own sterotypes. Forget comparisons to doctors, priests, rock stars. In crucial ways, hairdressers are just as important. They are professionals who stand at the transformational heart of the contemporary world. They are the new high-priests of self-definition.

Historically, the time is right. No other professsion has as legitimate a claim to the role of metamorph. No existing profession can perform this service quite as the hairdresser does. Hairdressers are our transformers. It is they who advise women as they make their way from one self to another. The time is right for them to seize the opportunity, to make themselves the metamorphic profession.

But it won't be easy. If they wish to be the new profession in charge of transformation, hairdressers must reinvent themselves. Too many crucial decisions are being made at the chair under pressure of deadline, an impatient client and a noisy salon. New responsibilities demand new methods.

It is necessary to take more time with clients. It is necessary to do periodic consultations, off the floor, away from the cutting and coloring. Client and hairdresser must meet face to face and talk. It is necessary to keep a written and polaroid record of the good cuts and the bad ones. It is necessary to rehearse the clients options in a more systematic way; style books will not do it anymore. It is necessary to get to know the client, to listen to her, with more and better care. It is necessary to take the file home at night and dwell on where the client should be headed."

I am so in-line with what he's saying here. I really want to integrate it into my work. I have been telling some of my clients for a while now that I want to start doing digital pictures of all their cuts/colors since it would be so cool to look at how they change over time.

I think I'll just jump on in and do it!

that's all for now.
Over and out.
-Lynn Caldeiro

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I really like when people are expressing their opinion and thought. So I like the way you are writing