I went to a salon yesterday. Now for me this was somewhat of a momentous occasion because I don't really like salons. There's just something unnerving about a complete stranger getting their fingers on my hair for an hour. It's not that I don't trust them, I just don't like the proximity. I mean, this is going to last an hour at least, and this is someone I don't know. It's not as though I'm going into a store where all I have to say to the cashier is 'hi' and 'thank you'. No, my issue with salons is the magnified social implications thereof. I have to talk to this person.
Okay, so it's not hard to talk to them. The hard part is the conversing. I just don't converse. I don't care to. I don't care who you are or where you're from, and if I talk about myself you'll only think I'm weird anyway. Just... cut my hair and be done, okay? Cheers.
Socializing in a salon is not what this post is about though, so before I set off on a tirade of how much I hate socialization (because it's been a thorn in my side all week), let me get back to the topic at hand.
As I'm wont to do with a lot of silences, awkward and otherwise, my mind wanders. I've just mentioned this a couple of days ago actually. I keep myself pretty well entertained, and it didn't take long at the salon to find myself at another silence, watching the stylist in the mirror. He colored my hair first, of course. I only mention this for any males reading who wouldn't know this. Always dye your hair first, lads!
I was sort of entranced. I haven't had a professional color since the fiasco with blue hair sometime between middle school and high school. I didn't go all out blue, just some streaks, but they faded pretty instantaneously leaving me with chunks of blonde instead. It was this instance that I was thinking about as he applied the gunk to my scalp. From here I made a giant mental leap to bleaching hair which took me to the Romans. This never seems to fail, does it?
See, as agonizing as burning chemicals in your mane is today, I'd hate to have been a patrician lady doing the same to her hair in days of yore. For example, there is one recipe that calls for leeches and vinegar. Let it sit, put it in, let it sit a bit longer and... enjoy your darkened leech gut look! Prostitutes were required to bleach their hair, and this practice is probably the reason why blondes today get so much slack for promiscuity. Still, some things weren't so bad. If you were wealthy enough you could sprinkle gold flakes into your locks for an added shine. This is perhaps the most inspired use of gold that I've ever heard of. Makes a nice little souvenir of your memories of assassinating the emperor, just don't forget your haircutting shears, okay?
Cosmetics across the board were fantastically disgusting, and are one of the few reasons why I'm glad I live now rather than then. I suppose the only difference today may be the use of long (Latin) words to signify the ingredients that are sometimes no different to what the ancients used. What we don't know can't hurt us, right?
Actually no. Take, for instance, the desire to have fair skin. For some reason, light people want to be dark, and dark people want to be light. Personally I like my pasty white complexion. I'm looking forward to good skin into my old age, unlike compulsive tanners who turn to leather like a dead cow. Oooh. Burn..... literally. So the Greeks and Romans liked to plaster themselves white using lead. Given that lead, as we've learned in recent centuries, is bad and poisonous, it is of my opinion that this practice of smearing one's face with lead is how women became Bedlam crazy in the first place. Eventually it seeped into genes, and every last female on this planet is now a walking explosive.
Lastly, skin care was just as hokey and lucrative as any major enterprise. I remember being in Bath, England taking a tour of the ruins. On my handy tour headset, the pleasant voice of a British woman detailed to me the horrors of hair removal. Up until this past century women have endured hours of plucking. Yes, every last hair was ripped from under your arms, your legs, and other places by a slave. I've tried plucking hair off my ankles. I couldn't endure one single follicle freeing. I don't think I could do it for a thousand dollars.
Let's not forget to mention lotions and skin care products. Where we like to use extracts from plants, Romans were fond of animal excrement. No, that is not an auto-correct failure of 'extract'. Dung, urine, among other things that come out of an animal, were all used to cake your face in hopes of preserving youth. Unfortunately I don't think any word can cover up that 'placenta' in the list of ingredients on your bottle of Roman formula body butter because that's already Latin. So yeah, that is really what you think it is.
In context, I'm sure none of this bothered women of the day. Things have changed, and we've managed to get through the years of fashionably blackened teeth to wind up here in a safer time and place. Still, given these practices, it's a wonder cosmetics have survived and thrive as they do. We still spend hundreds of dollars a year to look like somebody else, and we pay for this without skipping a beat. After two hours of awkward silence, I walked out feeling different and a little better, but also with a renewed determination to not spend a week's worth of wages on my hair (and a bottle of the greatest shampoo on the market!) like that again.
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