When Women Talk: Notes from the Beauty Salon
Rhonda listens in on some girl-on-girl chat and feels less alone.
Credit: Steven Cordes on Unsplash
I’ve always been a low-maintenance kind of girl. Not for me manis, pedis or hours under the foils at hairdressers, waiting for colour to take. Partly because you can do all those in much less time at home while multi-tasking. And I’m definitely a multi-tasking kind of girl. I’ve had to be.
But here I am recumbent for a full 75 minutes at my local beauty salon, having my lashes and brows done. Which is actually to my mind a timesaver, obviating the need to fanny around with mascara of a morning.
I must not cry, I must NOT cry, I’m chanting to myself as I lie there. It would wash all those nasty but necessary chemicals away, or into my eyes. And worse: I can’t cry for another two days as my new lashes can’t get wet for 48 hours.
I really do want and possibly need to cry, because something I think should happen, and think would be so good and right, probably won’t happen. Because life doesn’t always work like that. But accepting that doesn’t make it sting any less.
Squeezing in the tears tickling my ducts, I feel very lonely. l itch to open my eyes, grab my phone and seek solace from my girlfriends. You’re overthinking. It’s all going to be alright. What’s meant for you won’t pass you by. It’s torture to be trapped in my head like this, reliving gorgeous recent moments of soul connection that will probably never be repeated.
But then the salon gets busier and conversations begin to spark up around me, reminiscent of birds calling to one another at daybreak. My mind shifts towards these sounds like a flower turning its face to the sun.
Not being able to see the women who are talking makes the conversations all the more potent. Two of them, over in the hairdressing area, sound very young; perhaps in their early 20s. One of them is telling the other about her recent holiday in Ayia Napa, about how drunk she got, about how she woke up still drunk the next morning, the room spinning around her, about how it’s put her off drinking. I picture it all in my mind: the dancefloor giddiness, the staggering home in the dark, high heels in hands, leaning on one other, talking happy nonsense – my own memories of girls’ holidays wrapping themselves around and entwining with hers. The sheer dizzy, ditzy mess of it and how the hangovers and the comedowns are always worth it.
Credit: Vinicius "amnx" Amano on Unsplash
On the bed beside me, another woman is being tweezed to within an inch of her life. She’s talking to the salon owner about how she recently went to Tunisia by herself. About how she loves being and travelling alone but about how difficult it was keeping her spirits up and knowing how to occupy herself during several successive days of unexpected rain. And she also talks about about how the waiters ‘hounded’ her. I can’t see what she looks like. I wonder if she’s very beautiful and sexy. I wonder what she means, precisely, by ‘hounded’. I think about the male gaze and male attention, about how we say we hate it but feel like shit as it evaporates as we age. I think, as well, of the many waiters around the world I’ve developed crushes on since about the age of 14. The thought of these pashes, how intense they felt at the time, makes me winch and giggle at the same time.
The salon owner herself talks about her imminent move to Dubai, where she’s setting up a beauty training institute, putting her five kids into private school. I nod along as she talks, approving the sassy of this confident woman who is using her skills and business acumen to steer her ship from a back-street Manchester salon to a glossy new life in the sun.
From there the two women somehow segue to the topic of the lone traveller’s brother and his partner, how the pair will soon have three kids under three years old, how that means the woman has been pregnant for most of the past four years, how hard that is but possibly also better in the long run… There’s a silence and I sense all of us are trying to imagine ourselves in her shoes, how that would feel.
My therapist has been quiet as her fingers flutter about my eyes, probably listening herself to the sonic waves of conversation, the tides of it ebbing and flowing around the space, having her own reactions, following her own meandering pathways of unlocked memory, feeling pangs of jealousy or desire or inspiration or a mix of all three and other emotions besides.
But then she and I start talking – about nothing at first, but soon it all comes tumbling out, her partner having just lost his job, her early-teen daughter turning a bit feral and giving her cause for concern.
She tells me I’m done, I can open my eyes now. Our gazes intersect in the mirror. She looks tired and worried. I give her what I hope is a reassuring smile and tell her I’m sure he won’t be out of work for long. I’ve been there, sista.
The burdens we carry, the love we carry, the keeping afloat we do.
And then I think should spend more time in beauty salons. So much human life is here, within these walls. Everyday stories, everyday women – all unique but each with her own joys and passions and sadness and disappointments and even tragedies and also hopes and dreams. We are all different yet somehow the same. We talk to one another and we listen, really listen. And that is everything.
I no longer feel alone. And my lashes are epic.