When Helen Davies entered the office that morning and saw the make shift arrangements I can remember she visibly blanched. I think that moment must have been when things became a reality for her. After glancing around quickly she flushed deep pink; I could smell the perfume increase from her as her body temperature rose. Desks had been moved to the wall and the central coffee table removed; a simple black swivel chair placed in the middle of the room looked confrontational. One of the screens from the open plan area cut off a corner of the room. A waist-high table sat to the right of the chair. On it were scissors, a comb, clippers and a neck brush. The blinds were down and shut on the only wall with a window.
Shewore a twinset in pale green cashmere. It set off her creamy complexion and red-blonde hair well. Her snub nose and everted full lips gave hera sexy look, despite the overly old-fashioned dress style and formal coiffure for a woman of around forty. Overweight but shapely, herbottom and upper thighs were wrapped in a tight grey tweed skirt. Her legs were stockinged and her feet shod with a pair of high blackstilletoes.
Strangeas it might seem, this respected female colleague, a fierce and independently minded upper middle-class Englishwoman, had been ordered to appear in my office that Monday morning for a haircut appointment.The hairdresser, through a ridiculous set of circumstances which prove that life is stranger than art, was myself – in other words the Human Resources Director of the company we had both been employed by for more than fifteen years. The ‘silliness’ all started through a company merger. I survived the merger, though many of my colleagues didn’t. I soon got used to being astounded and confounded on a daily basis by anew board and by an almost completely new set of executives from the French company that had taken us over. Many business decisions were now draconian and to me appeared to be nonsensical. But the choice was made clear to me – obey them or be sacked summarily. I couldn’t afford for that to happen, and honestly believed I could change things for the better if I stayed.
Anew policy had appeared shortly after the merger requiring employees to wear a corporate ‘uniform’ during work hours. This was allied with arequirement for male employees to get rid of any facial hair and wear their hair in a short-back-and-sides style. This was close to the contemporary look anyway, and most male employees, anxious to retain their jobs, willingly acceded. The situation for female employees was of course different. Theirs was a choice of styles. The first was a short boyish crop or pixie; the second an angled, short bob, cut at mid-ear height in a boxy blunt cut style. Whilst these styles were modish at the time, they were uncompromisingly short, and there was of course an outcry. A legal process established the company was with in its rights to make the wearing of one of these styles a condition of employment. Most female employees had somewhat reluctantly just incorporated the new hairstyle into their routine once they realised there was no escape from it, and had arranged an appointment with their usual stylist. They were allowed to claim the cost of the re-style on expenses, and the reasonably generous allowance had covered their cost and given them a small profit – something cleverly designed by the management to mitigate their initial disgruntlement. A few, no more than about five women, had point blank refused, and of these three had sought legal advice. Helen was one of these women.
I can’t believe you are doing this, Michael, she said, with real contempt.
You know that the company couldn’t get a hairdresser to do it, I replied.I’ve been on a course, and the styles are simple to do, Helen. Pleasesit down and choose your option, don’t make it even more difficult than it already is.
I tried to hand her the laminated piece of A4 on which black and white photographs of the two hairstyles were displayed but she brushed myhand away with her arm.
I don’t want to choose, she said, her voice rising in shrill protest. This is utter nonsense Michael!
If you refuse point blank to comply with company policy the company will sack you summarily, I replied. Or you can take the third option, and opt for a charity headshave…
The company had agreed to a ‘third way’, which involved them contributing five hundred euros to the pension fund on behalf of the ‘refusées’, asthey called them. The price for this was a high one: to have their hair shaved off completely. Personally I had expected more women to takethis option - to lose their hair in an open act of bravery and defiance. But so far only one woman had agreed to go this route. I was meeting her later.
You know I can’t afford to lose my job. My husband’s just been made redundant, stated Helen.
Well take the haircut, Helen, like everyone else..Please?
No!
Please leave then, Helen, while I phone Yves. I’m instructed to do that. I’m sorry.
Helen rose and left the room. I wondered what to do. I was in a difficult position. I did not relish effectively giving an esteemed colleague the sack after a career of twenty years with the company. But it seemed like I was being forced to. I picked the phone up uncertainly and then replaced the receiver. I left the room, angered because I was already late, at this early hour, with my heavy schedule of haircuts. I got myself a coffee then returned to the temporary salon. I picked up the phone again and called Yves’ secretary, Lorraine.
Are you finished with your first appointment, Michael?, she asked.
Yes, I lied. Send the next along please, Lorraine.
Ithought I would let Helen wait - stew in her own juice. Perhaps she would see sense. A minute later a knock on the door and a young girl from the packing department entered. There was little fuss. A pretty girl with an abundance of dark curly hair, she chose the pixie crop,and I made short work of her shoulder length tresses with my clippers and comb. She seemed pleased with the look, though my anger with Helen was somewhat taken out on this unfortunate girl, whose nape I clippered down to an eight of an inch. She walked out of the ‘salon’ with a rueful smile, exploring the cropped close hair at the back of her head and neck uncertainly with her fingers.
Next came my appointment with the woman who had opted for the ‘third way’. A handsome woman in her late fifties, she had long grey hair down her back, that despite her age was abundant and in good condition. She usually wore it pinned up, and was wearing it like that for her appointment. There were hardly any preliminaries. She knocked on the door, was seated without a word, and caped. I offered her the alternative cuts like a final cigarette is offered by a firing squad to a man about to meet his death, but she shook her head in refusal, still without a word. She looked straight ahead into the mirror, impassive. I unpinned her hair and it fell on to the cape in a silvery wave. I then fitted a no.1 guard on to the clippers, switched them on with the accompanying low hum, and shaved all her hair off while she continued to look on without reaction. It was my first head shave, and it was hard work, emotionally and physically. After her shave I removed what hair clippings I could from the woman’s neck, face and shoulders with the neck brush provided. Her small bald head looked pale, luminous and alien. As she walked out of the door Helen made a re-entrance, doing an enormous double-take at the completely bald woman who was leaving at the same time.
My God, what have you done? she said, softly and with great feeling.
I think you mean ‘What has she done?’, Helen, I quickly replied.
I explained again that in my opinion she had a choice and that her shaving was an act deliberately chosen by her to make a political point. And I added that I found that ‘stand’ a brave if foolish one.During this explanation Helen was looking at all the hair on the floor- the long sinuous grey locks of the last appointment mingling with the springy dark curls of the young girl in random drifts and clumps.
And what can I do for you, Helen? I quizzed, while she looked at me in apparent shock at my reconciliation to the absurdity of the events now taking place.
Are you ready for your hair cut now?
Yes, she replied quietly.
She sat in the chair and requested me to ‘take it all off’. I looked at her unconvinced but just grunted assent and proceeded to cape her in the striped barber’s cape provided. Her stockinged legs and stiletto shoes protruded from under it. I swept the floor clear around the chair and pushed the mound of sweepings to the side of the room where it sat like a grimy black and grey snowdrift, the sort that is still around at the side of a busy road a week after it’s fallen. Helen stared at it sullenly. I wet her hair with the spray and combed it back from her forehead so she looked groomed and the bulk of the hair was lessened,and made darker with the wet. Then I took up the clippers, held them vertically in a tight grip rather like holding a thick pencil, and placed the unguarded metal blade just in front of her hairline, right in the middle of her forehead. I then switched them on. Even to me, the loud and low hum sounded sinister and ominous, and it obviously scared the hell out of Helen, trying to play Marie Antoinette in the barber’s chair. She twisted her head quickly and cried out for me to switch them off. I did so and went to stand in front of her with my arms folded.
I can’t go bald just like that, she sobbed, I’m too scared.
Collapse of stout party, I thought, cruelly, though I understood her individualistic femininity resisting almost instinctively a brutal shearing that would strip the thick tresses from her head and reduce her to a strange, hairless creature indistinguishable from other strange, hairless creatures.
OK,I said, let’s go for the longest style first. What about that? She nodded in reply. Have you got a tissue she said? I offered her my handkerchief and she dabbed her eyes while I redampened her hair and set to work on the bob. I sectioned the back above the top of her ears,fitted a no.2 guard, then without further ado shaved her nape and back of her head up past the occiput. I guess this was mild treatment compared to the ‘right down the middle’ ploughing she had just been spared, and she suffered it silently, raising her head to look at the growing mound of hair on her shoulders occasionally with a grim face. I noticed she wouldn’t look at me in the eye for very long. I took off the sides at an angle, then snipped off her foot-long bangs at eyebrow height. I thought the end result was rather elegant but she hated it and I rapidly followed up with the crop. The sides were sheared with clippers and graded in to the already clipped-close back. A huge ball of her red-blonde hair had gathered in her lap and in a ring around the chair. I had left the top of her head untouched and my favourite look,in hindsight, was this stage, her back and sides clipped almost vertically like a sheer cliff with the strangely lopsided and forward tilting mass on her crown and exposed ears making her look very masculine - like a footballer from the nineteen forties or a freshly inducted army recruit. I brushed away the hair from the her shoulders neck and face, and left her sitting there, contemplating her new cropped look, while I went to fetch a cup of coffee. I also made one for her, even though she’d refused my offer, and willing enough was the hand that reached out from under the cape and took it on my return.
I thought you might need that, I said.
Isn’t coffee amazing? I think the stimulant must have emboldened her,stiffened her resolve; either that or bewitched her, given her access to a fantasy of bald emancipation. Either way, she had just, to myutter amazement, told me to ‘take it all off’ for the second time. I repeated my request for an assurance that this was what she really wanted and I got it.
My cropped beauty sat erect in the chair awaiting the final stages of her cut, her newly framed face an impassive mask of resolve. I worked simply from back to front, starting on the left side at the nape of the neck, shearing off an inch and a half wide strip round her ears to her temple, then an overlapping stroke toward the centre of her head. The clippers laboured under such a workload, though the resulting fall of hair was impressive. When the blades neared the lesser slope of her crown, the cut hair gathered up in front of their sweep and remained there in a soft hillock that moved forward, collapsed and slewed down her face as the stroke finished over her forehead. Her sang froid was impressive; I suppose unconsciously it disturbed me, though I started to feel profound admiration for this brave woman. When the clippers had mown bare about half of her head, in the back to front manner I described, I placed my left hand at her hairline, slightly cupped, where it acted as a sort of barrier to the hair falling downover her face. I suppose my feeling was to lessen the irritation, for her, of having her crowning glory slithering down her face in regular waves of humiliation and lodging on her nose, eyelashes and lips - I could see her flinching as shorn locks brushed her pale eyelashes and sandy eyebrows or stuck on the dampness at the corner of her mouth. The three strokes from the centreline to where the slope fell away at her right temple were accomplished with this manual barrier in place, but at the end, instead of gathering the hair and pushing it out of the wayto the side or to the back, where it would fall out of her vision, I released the dam of soft shearings by just lifting my hand and letting the cut hair fall, in a soft avalanche, right down the front of her face. I saw her bite her lip and flinch, shocked by her sudden transformation from a woman with an eccentric short hairstyle to a completely bald Amazon, a woman with nothing between her scalp and heaven.
Rate this story now.
Enter some comments about this story or see what others have said on the forums.
Recommendations
If you liked this story, here are others that you might like.
Your Internet home for stories about male and female haircuts, head shaves, buzz cuts, alternative hairstyles, and more!
Copyright 2002-2012 by the owners of HairSnip.com