I was told to sit and stretch my neck outside the window. Then down the hill came a troop of little boys, each with a pail of cold water to pour on my head and let it drip into the street. She set my hair expertly she had been trained, she told me, in Paris and then to my surprise, dragged out a portable electric hair drier to finish the job. Now in the nineties, hair salons have gone unisex. And sometimes, sitting in mine next to a young blade with a beautiful crop of hair, watching him get shampooed, trimmed, and blow-dried in a fraction of the time it will take me to have a permanent, I think how unfair life is.
Men don t have to go through what women do from child birthing to permanent waving.
But the next thought is that when that young whippersnapper is old and domed, his elderly wife will be on the phone making an appointment for her shampoo and set.