When I was little, my mom took me to this Vietnamese beauty salon to get my hair cut. She took me there, even though the lady wasn’t terribly great about cutting straight lines or anything, because she could speak Vietnamese and because she was cheap. So for a long time, I had bad haircuts and didn’t think anything of it. Hair has never been that big of a deal to me, I suppose - I use Suave, alternating between ‘Passion flower’ or ‘Milk and honey’ (depending upon when I want people to pick my hair or eat it). What the hell. It’s dead protein.

Thus it was quite a culture shock for me when I entered Beauty Brands today for a haircut. It’s not like I’ve never been in a beauty salon before, don’t get me wrong; I’m not a complete boor! But today was the first day that I decided to actually purchase salon hair care products, in part because of peer pressure. No, it doesn’t stop in high school, folks. My roommates litter the bathroom with chique hair cream/gel/pomade (I can’t tell the difference). I overheard a girl during my alternative spring break trip, yelling at a guy that was teasing her about the sheer amount of beauty products she could not stand to live without. She said something to the effect of, “I don’t use any of that cheap Suave crap. I actually have hair that doesn’t look like utter shit!” Yeah, ouch.

This is why I found myself surrounded by rows and rows of bottles: fancy flute-like vases, colorful wacky tubes, things that looked like minimalist sculptures, etc. ad infinitum - all basically containing the same substance, give or take a few chemicals here and there. Shimmery things to put on your face, buff your nails, trim your brows, clip to your hair…I spend about 5 minutes a day on my appearance in the morning, maybe 15 if I haven’t taken a shower the night before. So yeah. I was completely out of my element. It took me fifteen minutes to find ‘normal’ shampoo, for chrissakes.

As far as the hair cut itself, I was told by my roommate to go to Kayla, but I didn’t bother checking to see if she was a senior stylist or not. I thought after the phone call, “if she is, then no big deal; it’ll just be twenty five to thirty dollars, right?” That’s ten dollars more than I usually pay for a cut at a beauty school back home, but eh. I soon forgot about that, until I sat down in the nice black leather swivel chair (must ALL hairstylists have black leather swivel chairs? why not vinyl, or blue?), and she turned my chair so that I was facing a sign on her counter. The sign read: “Be sure to offer Kayla congratulations for graduating our beauty school program. As of March 15, 2004, the prices below will be effective: haircuts, $38…”

Of course, I noticed that as soon as she took the first snip of my hair. I sat there for a few minutes trying to figure out how to get myself out of this, but, yeah. Neither Kayla, nor Beauty Brands, would have appreciated it had I been like, “Uh yeah, I would never pay close to $40 on hair, when I can buy a hat for less than that. Is that other stylist over there available?” It’s never a good thing to piss off someone standing over you with sharp scissors and red hot curling irons.

My hair ended up looking cute, though, and I walked out with shampoo and conditioner that were 75% off, so I feel a little redeemed. Still. $38 for hair??! That’s like eight hats, two tanks of gas, one third of my chemistry book last semester, three months’ worth of food for a starving African child…