TRANSCRIPT
I have had the same man cutting my hair since the late 90s, so it’s been 20 years. We’ve developed a bond; we’ve developed a relationship. There’s something very intimate about someone cutting your hair, especially over and over and over again.
When I first met him, I was just becoming a therapist. Well, what would happen as I would come in is he would talk to the other people who worked in the haircutting salon, and they would always call me the psychiatrist. “Oh, here comes the psychiatrist!” And I always say, “No, no, I’m not a psychiatrist. I’m a therapist,” or “I’m becoming a therapist,” or “I’m a social worker.” Well, that didn’t really go in exactly what this is. “Oh, he’s a psychiatrist.” They still say it, actually, when I go so often. “Oh, he’s the psychiatrist.”
Sometimes they would ask me questions about certain things, certain sort of psychological questions, certain scenarios, things that were going on, questions about personalities and things like that.
Well, what happened that brings up this subject of vanity for me is I came in one time, and at the end of a haircut, he was putting the mirror around, and I looked and I noticed on the top of my head—this was for me age right around, hmm, I think it was around age 32—so I’d been seeing him already for a good five years. Well, he put the mirror on after he’d finished the haircut, and I noticed my hair looked like it was kind of thinning at the top of my head a little bit. I’d never noticed it before.
I said, “Huh, am I starting to go bald?” And my haircut her, my barber said, “Oh no, no, no, I never talked about that with clients. I never ever talked about it with my customers.” I said, “What about balding?” He says, “No, I never say it.” I said, “So am I going bald? Am I going to go bald?” He goes, “No, no, no. Like I said, I don’t talk about it with people. That’s something between them and themselves in their own mirror.” And I said, “So you won’t tell me something that you probably know a lot more about than I do because you know about hair patterns and all this?”
He says, “Listen, I don’t tell it.” I said, “Why not?” Listen, I said, “I was just curious from a psychological effect.” And I told him, I said, “Psychologically, I’m curious. You never tell people.” He goes, “I’ll tell you why. He goes, when people ask if they’re going bald, let’s just say they are hypothetically,” he said, “and I tell them that they’re going bald and I tell them how it’s gonna progress, well, what happens is they never come back after I tell them. Even longtime clients, they always get all weird about it. They don’t want to know. Those people really don’t want to know if they’re going bald because let them figure it out for themselves. I’m not gonna be the one to tell them.” I said, “Oh, I get it. It’s the concept of kill the messenger. You’re the messenger, and they want to kill you off.” He goes, “Exactly. It’s called kill the messenger.”
So I said, “Oh, okay, that’s a bell. Listen, I said, you’ve known me for five years. I’m a psychotherapist. I’m someone who has a lot of connection with myself. I know myself very well. I’ve learned to love my body. I respect myself. I don’t have insecurities about that. For me, it’s just a strictly objective question.” You guys, now I ain’t gonna tell you. I said, “Come on, don’t listen. So it’s not gonna threaten me. I just want to know it objectively. What’s gonna happen? And you’re gonna know better than I am.” I said, “Listen, I know myself well. I’ve dealt with myself and my body for a long time. I’ve really overcome a lot of humps. I know I don’t have insecurities around this. I don’t have it. I used to have insecurities around my hair. I no longer have insecurities around my hair. Like, trust me on this one.”
He looks at me, and his face dropped a little because, you know, “Okay, I’m gonna trust you because I’ll tell you the truth.” He says, “Your hair is starting to thin. What’s going to happen is you’re not going to notice it so much over the next few years, but in five years and ten years, there’s going to be a bald spot, and it’s gonna start spreading. And it’s gonna spread, and about 15 years, it’s gonna be like about like this,” he said. “Then eventually what’s going to happen is it’s gonna spread all the way down, and you’re probably not gonna lose it in the front because you’re not having a receding hairline, but you have the kind of baldness pattern, and I’ve been watching it for a few years.”
I said, “You’ve been watching it for a few years?” He goes, “Yeah.” And I said, “And I’m gonna start getting a big bald spot?” He goes, “Yeah, that’s what’s gonna happen, and it’s gonna spread, and it’s gonna go down the back, and eventually it’s gonna get—when you get older, it’s gonna get—I’m gonna go bald.” He goes, “Yeah, you know, lose your hair, and it’s gonna start in the back.” I don’t want to go bald because thinking you’re just telling me you don’t care if I told you it makes nothing subjective stuff and being a psychiatrist. I said, “It’s aneesa’s what?” And I said, “No, no, but I’m gonna be okay. Don’t worry.” He goes, “Well, that’s what’s gonna happen. You’re gonna lose your hair.” And in five, I said, “Okay, okay, I got it. I understand.”
And I went out, and I thought about it, and I went home and I got an extra mirror, so a second mirror, and I looked at my hair, and I saw what was gonna happen, and I feel horrible. I just felt insecure, and my vanity was affected.
Well, fast forward a month after that, my hair was growing out. I was working as a therapist. I look in the mirror, I see my hair going. I’d still keep looking at that little bald spot and thinking, “They’re really true.” And it got longer. Two months passed, and it’s like, “Okay, it’s time for me to go for my haircut.” And I thought, “You know, I think I can cut my own hair, and I can save the money.” And I think I rationalized it that way, and I started trying. “Well, maybe I can do it,” and I would clip my own hair, and I did it even without a mirror in the back. I could just do it with a mirror in the front, and I didn’t look at the top of my—I don’t want to look at the top of my head. It makes me kind of uncomfortable. I don’t want to think about that. I want to think about getting older. I’m not—I still feel like I’m barely a kid. I still feel like I’m getting over a horrible stuff that happened to my childhood, and I’m suddenly becoming an old man. I wasn’t quite ready for that.
So I skip the haircut for one month, and I did, yeah, you know, on my own head, and I thought I can do it pretty well. And the back was a little tough, but I was able to do it, and I cut it kind of short. Never been new through. You got a different haircut. You know, you got a brush cut now. Trying something new. I’m trying to—I’m a minimalist. I said, “I’m doing it myself.” So I went on a couple months later, my hair’s getting growing out a little bit and getting curly and wild. I thought, “Well, I have this clipper. I’ll try it again.” So I did it again, cut my hair, and went on a few more times, missed a few more haircuts. And then fast forward about a year and a half, almost two years later, and I was feeling guilty because I thought, “You know, he was right. He knew me better than I knew myself.” It’s kind of embarrassing, and then I kind of felt like I didn’t want to go back. Didn’t want to have to face him.
Well, one day when my hair was getting long, I thought, “You know, I’m gonna go back.” And I took a deep breath and went over to his haircutting salon, his barber shop, and walked in. And he saw me, and he looks at me like this. I haven’t seen him in two years. He looks at me, goes, “Hmm, how’s the psychiatrist doing?” And I’m like, “Okay, good. Hmm, come on.”
Let me see the top of your heads now.
And I look, he bent down a little bit for him. He goes, “So you’re going bald, I see.” And I said, he goes, “Yeah, so you’re so mature and you can take it. You can hear you have objectivity.” That he’d been waiting for me. He knew I was gonna come back, ’cause we actually really did have a really nice bond.
He goes, “Ah, come on, sit down, sit down.” And so it’s time for my haircut. I sat down, and he cut my hair. And he goes, “No, I see your baldness is spreading. The little bald spots getting bigger. Your hair’s thinning out.” And I was like, “Mm-hmm, it’s true.” And you know, I felt it was fine. Let him tease me a little, ’cause I deserved it, because he was right.
And it was very interesting for our relationship. I remember that. And, um, by the way, I’ve still been going back to see him. Now it’s been 13 more or so years since I’ve been going back. I did acknowledge it to him. I think, you know, in all fairness, you really did know me better.
He goes, “Listen, I’ve been cutting hair for 35 years. I know all about cutting hair. I know how guys are. You’re all the same.” Everybody’s this. And by the way, my hair cutter, he’s losing his hair because I went through it too. He goes, “You just gotta accept it. Don’t fight it. Don’t do any of those comb-over stuff. That’s ridiculous. Just grow older. Let yourself be natural. Don’t dye your hair. Don’t hide.” I’ve done under this plugs and all this because I’m not gonna do anything. I refuse to cut your hair if you want to do any of that comb-over stuff.
And so I learned a lot from him. I learned, you know, also about myself. Sometimes I think I can know myself so well, only to discover that I have blind spots. Literally areas in which, no pun intended, I can’t see myself in the mirror. And also, it’s nice to have people who can be honest with me and people who I have a real bond with.
And in a funny way, this whole idea of being a therapist at all, in a strange way, in certain parts of my life, this guy is like a therapist to me. My barber, he is like a therapist to me. And I’ve told it to him. And he goes, “Yeah, you know why I’m like a therapist? Unlike you guys? Because I tell it straight. I tell people how it really is.” I said, “Well, you don’t tell people about going bald because that’s an exception.” But for you, I’m gonna tell you, and I’m gonna tell you forever.
And it’s true, every time I come in, he goes, “Hey, let me see how it’s doing. Ooh, I can see more of the top of your head.” And I say, “You know, that’s the part of me that needs to be humble. I’m gonna take it. I’m gonna listen.” And the funny thing is, with him teasing me in a loving way, because I was teased when I was a kid, and it was not in a loving way. And I know he loves me, and actually, I love him. We have a great bond.
And in that way, it’s like, yeah, he’s helped me. And he’s helped me come to terms more and more with my baldness, or my increasing baldness, my bald spot, as they call it. Some people call it a helicopter launching pad, or when I was just in Africa, they call it a lollipop because it’s like someone licked the hair right off the top of my head. I liked that one.
Well, it’s been an interesting relationship also with me and YouTube and my bald spot. Because for the first however many years, I didn’t want people to see it. I wanted to edit it out. Sometimes I would be in, thinking, leaning forward when I’d be talking and thinking, and I was like, “Oh my God.” I noticed it afterwards when I look at the video when I was editing, and I could see it. And I was like, “I don’t want support.” When I was sitting, I’d say to myself in the back of my head, “Summer, don’t lean forward ’cause they’re gonna see it.”
So that’s part of why I talk about it, ’cause it’s just part of life, and it’s part of being a humble person to just accept who I am. Not easy. It’s a growth process for me, but it also feels better to be humble, not to have anything to hide, and to find my blind spots and to root them out and to work to love myself anyways.
I’m grateful to my barber because he’s helped me.
[Music]