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Jan 16 - "Do You Like It?"

By Stefano Blanca Sciacaluga

You've probably all heard this before. And you've probably never thought much about it. If there ever was a combination of four words that made someone sound doubtful of what they've done it's "do you like it".

At a restaurant, on Christmas Day, right after taking a photograph of you or somebody else; you've no doubt heard it before. And of course if the person doesn't sound one hundred percent convinced what they've done is right your "yeah sure, of course, why wouldn't it be?" isn't doing anything at all to help.

We're all liars, everybody lies, we love it - some more than others, of course - and it seems we like to lie so much that we even do it at the times where being brutally honest would benefit everybody. Everybody's a winner. Chicken dinner. "Yes, everything's fine, thanks" ("I can't wait to never come back here again"), "great, I love this jacket! Just what I needed" ("I'll keep 'forgetting' I have it and hope the spring comes round early this year"), "oh my God, you're so photogenic, you look great!" ("Oh my God...").

But of all the places where we constantly lie there's one that really takes the prize for most lies, and that's the hairdressers. I have neverlied and heard other people lie so much; just like that, in the middle of the day, to people you probably don't even know at all apart from the awkward small talk so it doesn't look like you're being forced to sit there for half an hour.

I got my hair cut yesterday for the first time in about five or six months. I've never really been happy with my hair, it's thin, somewhere between curly and wavy (depending on the direction in which the wind is blowing), it grows very slowly and it gets extremely dirty very quickly. I've tried everything: I've had it all lengths, from down to my shoulders to as long as my beard usually is, I've tried all kinds of shampoos, no-poos and given up on countless Google searches. I've done it all, and yet I am never happy with my hair. For about a little over a year now I have been trying out new things, new hairdressers and barbers and trying to avoid the extremes of cutting my hair really short the whole time or letting it grow uncontrollably. But the fear of a bad experience at the hairdressers has haunted me for months and a fairly-long, convenient, side-parting that I could tuck behind my ear to stay out of my face at work has kept me from booking an appointment. In fact, the only reason I woke up on Monday morning determined that I would get a trim this week was because my curly hair had made the sides and back of my head really bushy; I'm not Krusty the Clown and it's one thing having long hair and it's another thing looking like your button-down should be replaced by a dirty sweater and some cardboard boxes.

So I booked for five, yesterday, and excitedly (and a little anxious) left the office a couple of minutes early to get to my appointment on time. Trying to block out all the negative memories I sat down, tried to make up an image of what I wanted in my head and tried to explain it to the best of my ability. Now, communication is my thing, it's what I do all the time, every day,but I've learnt that a degree and years of language learning later and I still can't communicate with hairdressers; I think I've finally learnt that one human inch is four hairdresser inches, and that "just a trim" makes up enough hair to cover some poor bald guy's scalp.

So they wet my hair, showed me the "inch" of hair and cut that inch off and a couple more, just in case. When I walked in I had enough hair to cover my face, convenient, I know! When I walked out I had some "cool, oldschool" thing that although very well cut (I'll give them that) looks like the farmer missed a spot shearing a sheep. And it's only made worse by people telling me it looks better (you wear it like that then). But I've had worse cuts, like the time I told the barber not to touch the top of my head and all it took was a slight glance down at my lap and a long lock fell on the floor next to me, followed by walking out of the place with an absurd amount of hair-something all up in my 'do like I was back in 2004 when I thought wearing your hair like Sonic the Hedgehog was so cool. So I sucked it up, tried to find the positives, put on a brave face, lied to the hairdresser ("it's perfect!"), paid and stood outside the place for a minute trying to figure out what I was going to do next. Pure masochism, next I might pay somebody to kick me in the shins whilst I try to sleep.

But how hard can it be? Why is it OK for a hairdresser to hear what the client has to say and think, "actually, you'd look ugly like that, let me give you my preferred hairstyle"? Let's just say my hair hasn't really started the year on the right foot and I might be searching for somebody else to take care of it very soon.

Stefano is an artist, photographer, translator, linguist and good hair fan. You can find more of his work at:

www.stefanoblanca.com

www.instagram.com/stefanoblanca

www.vine.co/stefanoblanca