I opened my eyes this morning and ran my index finger along a strange, new and stubbly topography. The high temple hairline on my right side had undergone a seismic shift. It now rose in a jagged racing stripe line, well above my newly exposed, and protuberant, ear. I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. It had been close to twelve hours since a Supercuts stylist had buzzed and clipped my locks. My hair was now an incongruous mixture of precision clipping and haphazard lawn mowing. I was thrilled. I had received an affordable, sensible and refreshingly imperfect haircut.
My last visit to a Supercuts was around the same time it was acceptable to mull over a mullet when visiting the barber. So when I pulled up to the Supercuts near my home yesterday, I had only the faintest of pleasant childhood memories to cut through the unfair social stigma that’s somehow attached itself to the proud Supercuts franchise.I was greeted by a smiling woman in her mid 50s to early 60s who I will call “Wanda.” She was friendly, weathered and possessed of frayed, thinning and chemically treated hair that would give most potential clients pause. But not me.
I’ve been to my fair share of salons that left me feeling emasculated after paying 25 dollars for a pear-guava shampoo treatment, a 10 minute haircut, and a 10 minute pitch to buy “product.” The friendly “Wanda” harkened back to a simpler time when a haircut was a haircut. She asked me what I wanted and I explained to her the best I could. She then proceeded to do her thing. There was no flourish or style to the effort she put into the job. In fact, her bony fingers seemed to curl from time to time as if she was fighting against some type of arthritic pain. I appreciated the effort.
By the time I left the Supercuts, I was about $15 lighter in the wallet, but immeasurably wiser as a consumer. Supercuts represents a paradigm for a better way of living in this overstuffed, pretentious, and conspicuous consumption driven world. Its a fire hose for the bonfire of vanity and excess that’s led to pretentious salons, labradoodles and subprime mortgages. So what if I got a haircut with imperfections that would cause the cast of any Bravo show to spontaneously combust. I would like to thank “Wanda” for reminding me that effort and intent count for a lot more than style and flash. Oh yeah, I will not be including a picture of my haircut. Let your imagination run wild. Needless to say, it’s nowhere as cool as this one.
