I know it’s been forever and after giving it some serious thought, it’s best for me to put this blog on hold. My plan was to continue until the end of the year, but I can’t give it the attention it deserves right now. I’m not sure how long I will be away, but thanks for your support here.
Valerie
xoxo
p.s. – comment section is closed to keep me from weeping.
This guest post was written by Ron who blogs over Vent. I found Ron’s blog through Blog Catalog a few months ago and I’m so glad I did. He’s an excellent writer with a great sense of humor and always puts a smile on my face. Ron is an actor, one of his many talents, and has experience in theater and as a make-up artist. He describes his blog as a space were he can vocalize about his own personal observations of life. I have enjoyed my stays over at his blog, so please let’s give a warm welcome Ron as he blogs about The Psychology of Hair.
Unless you’ve actually worked as a cosmetologist, you would never realize that this occupation is 5% styling hair and 95% psychiatry.
It amazes me that cosmetology schools don’t include a basic psychology course as part of their training program.
They don’t even mention the fact that when you get out of school and start working in this profession, you’ll be touching the heads of people who are severely delusional.
I used to have a “magic wand” at my hair styling station for when a client would ask me to cut their hair, which would usually resembled a Chia Pet to look like either a movie star or a super model. I would literally take the wand, tap them on the head and say, “Not unless this wand will produce a miracle.”
My favorite clients where the ones who brought me in about 10 magazine clippings from VOGUE, ALLURE or HARPER’S BAZAAR on how they wanted their hair to look when I got finished with it. The clippings were always professional models who had been air-brushed and digitally mastered. Now, the reality of this was that the client wanted to BE these models. I finally got to the point were I bluntly started telling my clients, “If you decide to bring me in any magazine clippings, please be sure to use white-out on the faces before you show them to me, because I can only cut your hair…not perform cosmetic augmentation.”
Not only is this occupation riddled with unrealistic physical manifestations, but it’s also about having to listen to a clients personal problems. On the average, a stylist will usually see 8-10 people a day. So that’s 8-10 hair services, coupled with 8-10 psychology sessions.
I knew I was getting close to my “swan song” in this business, when one day a client said to me, “I know it’s only been 2 weeks since my last haircut, but I had to get in to see you because I’ve been an emotional mess and needed to talk to you, Ron.”
(oh, you mean…Dr. Ron?)
Finally, that day came when I had a new client who could not make up her mind about how she wanted her hair to look. I cut and blew it dry TWICE. She was a foreigner, so we had a bit of a language barrier, but I had been cutting hair long enough to know when someone shows me with their fingers, just how much length they want cut off. She wasn’t exactly sure what she wanted, so I guess she figured, “Oh, well…let me just see what it looks like at various lengths.
After cutting it for the second time the demon within me SNAPPED!
(I totally lost it)
Without even thinking, I ripped the cutting cape off from around her neck and then grabbed her purse off the counter; handing it to her, saying, “You don’t owe me any money for this appointment, but kindly remove yourself from the salon.”
(she blinked…then blinked again)
All the other stylists in the salon suddenly stopped cutting hair.
(you could hear a pin drop)
She looked at me and said, “Excuse me?”
I reiterated.
She said, “I want hair cut, sir!”
I said, “No, your haircut is finito…bye!”
She looked at me with a stern face and said, “You VERY mean man!”
I looked at her with a smile and said, “Yes, I agree, but you VERY confused woman”
After she left I picked up the phone and called the owners of the salon, giving my two weeks notice.
I let my license expire and never looked back.
However, I HAVE learned something very valuable from this experience.
I would rather eat thumbtacks and glass…than style another head of hair!!!
I saw this question on Plinky a few months ago and immediately I thought, it’s never okay to lie, but is that the truth? Is honesty always the best policy? I was reading a couple of blog posts on honesty and perjury and the majority of people who commented agreed that honesty is the best policy and under no circumstance would they tell a lie.
Uh huh. I’ll tell you why I don’t believe this and I think people lie more often than they are willing to admit or even realize.
In the book The Day America Told the Truth, by James Patterson and Peter Kim it stated that “91 percent of Americans lie regularly. The majority of us find it hard to get through a week without lying and one in five can’t make it through a single day without bending the truth.”
Ninety-one percent! I don’t find that statistic surprising at all. It’s not always easy to know how one will react when the pressure is on. We lie to be polite, we lie to impress, we lie to avoid punishment, we lie to flatter, but not all lies are meant to be harmful. I believe people lie more often than they realize because white lies, i.e. the Stork, Santa Clause, the Tooth Fairy, etc. are socially acceptable, whereas bald-faced lies1 are not. White lies may appear to be harmless, but they are still lies, right?
Then there’s the lie by omission, we only tell half the truth. We omit certain facts, details or information leading someone to believe one thing when we know another to be true. Lying, even on a small scale, seems unavoidable.
We lie to our friends, we lie to strangers, we lie to our employer, we lie to ourselves and what did surprise me during my research for this post is that the majority of people we lie to are the ones we love the most. That’s sad, but I understand why that may be true.
I’m no beacon of truth, just in case you’re wondering. I have told lies I’m not particularly proud of, but I still consider myself a trustworthy person. Is it possible to be 100% honest all of the time, I say no, but there are ways to tactfully tell the truth, and without hurting someone’s feelings. I travel on this road as often as possible. While I don’t believe that most people are practice liars, I do believe a majority of people engage in some type of lying, daily, unless you happen to be George Costanza, then it’s not a lie if you believe it.
Is lying is the social lubricant that sustains a civil society or does “lying corrode trust and intimacy—the glue of a civil society?”2
Your thoughts?
You know you’re getting old when last month feels like yesterday, boy time sure does fly, especially when you’re having fun. I will try posting more often on this blog because I don’t want to end up here.
If you’re interested in being a guest blogger, send me an email or click on the contact me link above. I do have one guest post coming up the week after next when I’m on vacation and someone is even interested in interviewing ME! I’ll be sure to post the link when and if that ever happens. Barbara S., I know I owe you one, I’ll make good on my word, thanks for your patience. I hope to get some writing done while away and finalize the posts I have written, once I find them. That’s the downside to writing my posts out by longhand, keeping up with the notebook I wrote them in.
I’ve also been looking around for a new blog theme, so if you happen to stop by one day and things look weird or different, then you’ve landed on the right blog, come on in.
I’ve enjoyed my summer and now I’m reluctantly preparing to roll out the red carpet for S.A.D. It’s already getting dark way too early and it’s messing with my mood. I do plan to keep myself occupied with the A Photo a Day for 365 days project, the artificial light should help a little. Sounds like a lot of work fun!
A short movie about the last 20 plus years of my life, according to my hair. There’s music, so please adjust your sound. If you want.
