My affair with hair camp (it's been demoted from 'hair school') hit a rough patch this week. I'm on laundry duty right now. Which means I sit in the laundry room for three hours stints with like six other people who are also assigned to laundry duty. Every few minutes someone gets up and throws a load of something wet into a dryer. Except only two of us are ever the someone doing something, while the other semi-useless bodies huddle around an iPad streaming some shitty reality show. This is when I realize that I'm surrounded by children that are beyond uninterested in anything resembling work ethic. They spent their high school career avoiding work, ergo they're here instead of university, and I'm here voluntarily. And I'm paying for the privilege.
This girl comes into the laundry room and tells us an adorable story about how she climbed into one of these enormous dryers and her friend rolled her around like a hamster wheel. Her story makes me feel better. One thing I appreciate about my fellow hair campers is the youthful sense of playfulness that survived their teenage years.
Every few minutes the terrifying industrial sized machines make inexplicable BANG and CRACK sounds. Everything in this building needs maintenance. There is never any toilet paper in the bathrooms, all the sinks leak, half of our chairs are broken or lopsided. Where is all of our tuition money going? I think, formulating a scathing complaint letter in my head. And if one more person tries to show me what shade of purple (excuse me, violet) their hair used to be, and tells me how much they loved it and how they were so bummed out when it faded I'm going to break their iPad in half. The same goes for pictures of other people's coveted tattoos. "I don't care!" I try unsuccessfully to say with my eyes. My least favorite thing about hair camp is that by virtue of my attendance here it is assumed that I care what all of my classmates look like, used to look like, and want to look like in the future. It is also assumed that I believe in, and have some base knowledge about the properties of my star sign.
A few weeks ago a girl in my class, one who would probably not be characterized as conventionally pretty, got a makeover. Our instructor gathered everyone around to watch her transform. Well he gathered us around to demonstrate the cut, but the latter felt secondary. He gave her a beautiful, A-line short cut, then waxed her eyebrow into two. Then some of the girls did her makeup, and she looked like a different person. I've never seen a human glow with fortitude before, it was an active glow. She beamed for the next three hours until class ended, and probably for three more hours after she went home. She couldn't stop smiling. From my station I could see her reflection in her station as she finished her hair cut on her Penelope. She was just smiling and glowing and beaming and radiating uncontrollably. Word got around and all the director-of-something ladies came by to check her out and tell her how great she looked. All the other girls were freaking out and taking pictures and touching her hair. She looked up at me and said: "I feel so special today."
And then the moral conflict set in, as it always does when I'm just starting to enjoy hair camp. "You are!" I vocalized, but my entire upbringing and my parents and my extremely expensive university education throttled me and implored me to explain to her that she was special every day and that placing such value in your appearance is secondary and narrow minded and that I secretly missed her unibrow! But I loved seeing her so happy. I want to make other people feel confident, of course. But can I do this guiltlessly? Will I ever stop thinking "what about the Syrian refugees? Access to clean water? Carbon emissions?" and is that a good or bad thing? Can I just relax and enjoy the craft of hair and makeup? Can I allow myself to value the finite skill and technique this industry requires? Can I appreciate the ephemeral pride in feeling pretty without wrenching some internal struggle out of it?
