Amy Lu's View

My dad used to do many things—both intentionally and unintentionally—to annoy my mother. One of these was to refer to the “beauty salon” she frequented as the “beauty saloon.” 

Whatever one called it, my mother regularly attended Julie’s Beauty Studio in Fall Creek to have her hair “done.” It wasn’t quite “Steel Magnolias,” or maybe it was—the rural Norweigan/German Wisconsin version (“Titanium Sauerkraut”?). Julie was a longtime friend of my mother’s (sadly both women are now deceased) and although as a teenager I wasn’t aware of much open camarderie or bonding going on at the saloon (sorry, SALON) I think my mom definitely derived some comfort in her visits.

My mom also seemed to have an almost moral stance that hair could’t just be—something needed to be done with or to it. Hair needed to be managed: cut, colored, permed and styled. Perhaps imposing order on one’s hair was a way to create some order out of the chaos of life.

While I certainly spent many hours of my life as a child and teenager at Julie’s Saloon (whoops, I mean SALON—I can see you grinning Gordon!) as an adult, I have had no regular hair maintenance program.

This means that except for a brief stint in my mid-20’s when I had really short hair and had a regular stylist that I saw at JC Penney’s at Roseville (Ed), my visits to a hair care professional to get my hair cut have been highly erratic. I’ve reached the stage (rock bottom?) that I’m lucky if I get my butt to Cost Cutters/Fantastic Sam’s 2-3 times a year to get my hair cut.

This state of affairs is NOT because I’m cheap (although I am) or because I’m making some type of social/aethestic statement about how I prefer my hair “natural”—I absolutely do NOT. I could write an entire blog just about coloring my hair and the quandries (logistical, environmental, health-related) that poses.

Suffice it to say that I do not feel compelled to accept (much less afirm) my hair in its natural state, but I find it too inconvenient to enlist professional help on a regular basis. It also becomes a viscious cycle: because I don’t regularly see a stylist, I feel there are more barriers to just dropping in at a discount facility.

It’s not that I don’t trust the Fanastic Sam’s and Cost Cutters of the world (I’ve actually had really good luck as their patron) but there are extra hassles. Will I be faced with trying to make awkward small talk with a stranger? Will my stylist mock me if my roots are too promiment or my hair is too dry and damaged? Will my stylist be insistent about doing something with my eyebrows? (Okay, this only happened once, but seriously, if I gave a damn about my eyebrows  would I be at F@#$ng Cost Cutters? Plus, after the car accident I was in when I was 16 I am just really happy that I have both eyebrows…)

Time to wrap-up the ranting: It’s a new year and a new decade, and I feel very accomplished that I’m kicking it off with a successful haircut (the stylist even complimented me on my DIY hair color job). I’m also trying to learn a little life lesson by ruminating on how even though I think my hair looks so much better, I was still a little sad to let go of all those inches (my hair was the longest it’s ever been pre-haircut). Change is hard, even when we want it, even when we think it’s good.

I can’t help but smile when I remember that as a teenager I thought I couldn’t possibly have long hair past 30, because then I would be way to old for that nonsense. It would just be sad, and make me look like Willie Nelson.

Now that I’m almost 20 years past my self-imposed deadline, I don’t quite know what to think. I do worry that sometimes I look like Willie Nelson, but getting older also makes the threat of helmet hair more and more real.

As I toy with the idea of New Year resoluations, I don’t foresee myself ever being a regular salon patron but perhaps I can make a little more of an effort to do some regular hair upkeep. And I can rebrand my DIY hair efforts as “Amy’s Beauty Saloon.”