this Article by Zara Barrie on Elite Daily
There is one person with whom we share an intimacy far greater — and that is: OUR HAIRDRESSER
The hairdresser is the fairy godmother to the modern woman, forever clad in chic, all-black attire, whose scissors serve as a magic wand, granting us our wishes and making us gorgeous.
We share a special bond with the people who make their living from lovingly massaging our dry, irritated scalps into oblivion while dutifully cleansing last night’s sins out of our hair.
It’s the most vulnerable and honest dynamic possible.
So what exactly is it that makes our hairdressers our real #soulmates?
They know our real hair color (even when we don’t).
Truth be told, we’ve been getting highlights for so many years now — the only person who knows our natural color is actually a frumpy, mousy brown reminiscent of a 1950s headmistress and NOT the beautiful, honey-strewn, Gisele-like golden lusciousness we have tricked the outside world into thinking is ours is the higher power up above AND our hairdresser.
Our hairdressers first laid eyes on us when were nothing but unfortunate-looking specimens skipping around the universe, attempting to find love and sex with an unattractive head made up of uncolored strands. In fact, it was them (and them alone) who saved us from ourselves by introducing us to the wonderful world of foils and bleach.
The state of our natural hair is a little secret we share with only our beloved hairdresser, and confidentiality is everything. They never tell anyone about the early onset of grey they’re covering every other week, or even about the bits of weave they have earnestly sewn into the base of our scalps.
The salon is a safe place, and we always re-emerge into the outside world as more confident, fabulous versions of ourselves.
They’re the most honest people in our lives (not including our mothers).
Seldom do we have a person in our lives (who’s not our mother) who has the guts to look us dead in the eye and tell us our face is too fat for bangs, that we will look like a socially conservative sexless politician’s wife if we cut our hair into the on-trend “lob” (long + bob), that our skin-tone is too ruddy to go Emma-Stone ginger, or that we should probably drop some weight before we attempt a pixie cut.
That kind of brutal, but oh-so-necessary honesty is reserved only for the sacred relationship we share with our hairdresser.
The best part is our hairdressers are never bullying us; they’re providing us with the imperative dose of reality we need when in search for our best (looking) selves.
Nothing shocks a hairdresser.
A hairdresser has heard/seen it ALL, girl. After years of hacking away at the tresses of everyone from babysitters, to socialites, to virgins, to hookers, to models, to teachers — nothing we could possibly say will scare off our hairdresser.
We can be our fabulously freaky, un-politically correct, booze-swilling, lying, cheating, bad selves with our stylists. The best part is, not only will they NOT judge us for our wayward personality and loose moral compass, they will appreciate us for it. Fashion/beauty people LOVE a colorful, sinful character.
Also, not unlike the magnitude of our wickedness, the sad state of our hair won’t shock them either. We never have to feel self-conscious about a hairdresser gawking at our broken, greasy locks. We can trust that back in their beauty school days, they saw much, much worse.
Take comfort in knowing that as thin and gnarly as we feel our hair may be, it can’t be worse then the drug-addled stoner guy’s hair they were forced to cut for free in the cosmetology school salon.
A blowout is more effective than a therapy session.
The interesting thing is this: that golden trust we gift to our hairdresser bleeds into so much more than hair. Our hairdressers told us we would look prettier with a collarbone-grazing razor cut, we listened, and we looked FAR better — now we trust them with our lives.
It takes much longer to build trust with a strange, static therapist. As soon as we snuggle into that salon chair and peer into the deep-set eyes of our trusted stylist through the fluorescent mega mirror, we are overcome with an irrepressible vulnerability and can’t help but spill our most repressed guts out onto the salon floor.
It’s a release we NEED, and hairdressers are also the very best listeners. It’s part of hairdressers’ job to deeply listen to a client so they can execute her hair properly; it’s a muscle I swear they build.
Their intentions are always PURE.
In an increasingly confusing world, made up of backhanded compliments and unethical “frenemies,” it can be hard to tell what/who is real and what/who is fake.
How can we tell if our coworker really likes the fashion-risk-taking, thrift-store-bought dress we finally mustered up the courage to wear to the office?
Chances are she’s making catty jabs at us right this very second in the break room with the rest of the staff. Our hairdresser will never do that to us. This is a relationship built on the rock-solid foundation of HONESTY. His/her career is the business of making you look/feel beautiful!
When a hairdresser becomes a real-life friend, nothing in the world is sweeter.
It’s no urban legend. It is very rare, but it does occasionally happen, kids. Sometimes the connection we share with our hairdresser cuts so deep, it bleeds into an unchartered territory exceeding the salon chair and into REAL LIFE.
If we are lucky enough to have this happen to us, it’s a gift from the high heavens and we must guard that friendship with our lives.
One can’t force it, for a stylist is a hot commodity in the friend department, and will only befriend a client outside of the salon when it’s an uncontrollable force greater than they are.
It’s a boundary-breaking partnership, akin to lovers who find out they’re second cousins, but embark on a passionate affair anyway.
When/if this happens, we experience the highest level of friendship possible. This is the only person who will ever be able to rescue us when we’re crying into our cocktails at 2 am in the bathroom stall of a nightclub because our ex is there with a new girl.
In these dire times, it’s only our BFF/stylist who will be able to wipe away our tears while simultaneously cutting us a fierce new set of bangs using the mini eyebrow-trimming scissors they dig out of from the bottom of our makeup bags. Now, that, that is a true bestie.