Maybe We Still Need the Old School Beauty Parlor

I’ve spent 20 years in the beauty industry, and lately I’ve been thinking about something that really doesn’t have much to do with hair. I think we still need the beauty parlor. Maybe now more than ever. 

Not necessarily the beauty parlor you remember from your grandmother, with the hooded dryers and weekly roller sets. Although I wouldn’t mind bringing back the part where everyone knew. Everyone and nobody was in a hurry. I’m talking about what the beauty parlor gave us, the community.

Hundreds of women walk through the doors of Twig every week, and if you stop and really think about that, it’s kind of incredible.Women of different ages. Different backgrounds. Different careers. Different beliefs. Different lives.Women who probably would never have met one another anywhere else.And for a few hours, they’re all together.There’s something that happens when you settle into a salon chair.You relax. Maybe you walk in after fighting traffic. Maybe you’re irritated with your husband. Maybe your teenager is making you question every parenting decision you’ve ever made. Maybe work is a disaster. Maybe you’re going through something nobody in the room knows anything about.Or maybe you’re having a great day.It doesn’t really matter.You sit down. The cape goes on. Someone asks if you’d like something to drink.And for the next few hours, you get to just be you.Not somebody’s mom.Not somebody’s wife.Not the boss.Not the employee.Not the person everyone calls when they need something.Just you.

Look around a busy salon sometime and you’ll see something I think we’ve become a little less accustomed to seeing people simply being nice to each other. A woman walks past another woman and says, “Your hair looks so pretty.” Someone asks where you got your shoes. A person you’ve never met laughs at something you said.Someone gets turned around in the chair to see her finished hair, and suddenly three other people are smiling because she looks so genuinely happy.They’re familiar strangers.I love that about a salon. You may have seen the woman sitting two chairs away every six weeks for the last three years and still have absolutely no idea what her name is, but you know her,you recognize her,you smile when she comes in.Maybe you’ve heard pieces of each other’s lives simply because you’ve spent hours sitting near one another.There is no obligation to that relationship.She doesn’t need anything from you.You don’t need anything from her.You don’t have to impress each other.And there is something really peaceful about that.

We’re living in a time when we’re encouraged to have an opinion about everything, and then defend it. We’re sorted and labeled constantly. Online, it can feel like saying the wrong thing, asking the wrong question or having the wrong opinion can turn a conversation into a battle.But in the salon? Nobody needs to know who you voted for.Nobody needs to know what church you go to or if you go at all.Nobody needs to know how you parent, what you believe or which boxes you check.You can just be a person sitting next to another person.You can talk.You can laugh.You can listen.You can disagree.You can compliment a stranger.You can change the subject.You can be quiet.And nobody cancels anybody. 

For three hours, we can just be women together.I don’t think we realize how much we need spaces like that anymore. Places where nobody expects anything from us.Places where we can let our guard down. Places where kindness doesn’t have to be complicated.

That’s what I want Twig to feel like and it makes my heart happy every time I see it, hear it from a guest or just feel the great energy in the salon. Of course, we’re serious about hair. We want you to love it. We want you to feel beautiful when you walk out our doors,but I also want you to feel better than you did when you walked through them, and I’ve watched it happen thousands of times.Someone comes through the door distracted, stressed, rushed or clearly just not having her best day.Then she settles in.Someone brings her a drink. Her stylist starts doing her hair. She talks, or she doesn’t. A little while later, she’s laughing.She’s chatting with someone nearby.She’s telling another guest she loves her color. And when she leaves, she’s smiling.Not because every problem she walked in with magically disappeared.She just got to put them down for a few hours.

Maybe that’s the part of the old school beauty parlor worth holding onto.The idea that a salon can be more than the place where you get your hair done.It can be one of your places.Your coffee shop. Your neighborhood restaurant. Your favorite little store where they know your name.Your salon. A place filled with familiar faces, familiar strangers and people who are genuinely happy you came in.

Maybe our grandmothers knew something we forgot. Sometimes you need your hair done and sometimes you just need to get to the beauty parlor.