When salons were ordered to close their doors in March you might have heard a collective gasp from women all over the country. Since then there have been memes, jokes and the overdone making fun of women for being desperate to get their highlights fixed. But I believe there is another side to this story.
We’re used to infantilizing women and making fun of their interests, but beauty salons are the opposite of that. They are a unique space that offers women refuge and respite from the daily grind. Being women-only establishments, patrons let their hair down figuratively and literally, are allowed to be themselves and to aspire to being an even better version after a couple of hours.
Despite shifts in some views and attitudes, there are still many women who are not afforded enough personal time and space. New moms might feel judged for leaving the baby to go to the gym or to meet friends or they might not have the support system to be able to do that. Yet, escaping for an hour to get their hair done is socially acceptable and most salons are welcoming to children.
Nail technicians and hair stylists are great listeners. They have had years of experience of being faux therapists. Most of them will let you talk about everything and they will just nod or ooh and ah until you have talked yourself out of whatever has been weighing on your mind.
There’s also the issue of accessibility. There are a couple of salons in every neighborhood and prices vary widely, so there is almost always one that you can afford. In fact, many women have a couple of places they visit, the fancy place for special and technical things like balayage and haircuts and the hole-in-the-wall place that will give you a 2 KD blow out. Newcomers to Kuwait might be surprised by the ubiquitousness of salons, but this is quite similar with most Arab countries. The salon serves an important role in the community; it is a place of age-old cultural beauty rituals and a sanctuary.
Salons often get a bad rap too, because they are tied to women using makeup and hair dye to misrepresent themselves. We don’t accuse men of this when they go to the gym to change how they look. Our visual identities are not written in stone. People are allowed to explore different ways of appearing to the world and we don’t need to justify our choices.
The fact that we still have to defend the only space that we can call our own as women is telling that we still need it. We refuse to apologize for wanting a mani/pedi or getting our eyebrows done. Despite what many men think, we are not doing it to look good for them, we go because at the salon, we can just be.
Photo by Guilherme Petri on Unsplash.
