Yesterday I got lost in the frozen tundra of suburban sprawl aka Ashburn, VA. I was on my way to get my hair cut, and all those McMansion neighborhoods started to look the same. They helped assuage some of my "white person guilt," though. "At least I don't live here," I (smugly?) muttered to myself as I made a u-turn at the entrance to a gated community.
Once I finally figured out that Google Maps had lied and arrived at the salon, there was some fun material culture trivia in store. Did you know that professional hair shears cost hundreds to thousands of dollars? All I knew was the $40 Wahl hair clippers my Mom uses on my little brothers.
When I sat down, my stylist announced that she was testing out a $1200 pair of shears, and was dying to try them on curly hair. Apparently it's the tempered steel that makes them so expensive. The best ones are made in Japan, forged like samurai swords.
Here's another fun fact: the culinary and cosmetology worlds can overlap. My stylist has a culinary degree, and switched to hair when she got sick of restaurant chauvinism. The chain-smoking salesman who had visited her salon with a case of shears to "test drive" was also a former restaurant worker. To these two, high quality hair shears are just as fun as a new set of kitchen knives.
Do I smell a Top Chef/Shear Genius crossover? You can thank me later, Bravo.
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