musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

Beauty and the Beast


I’ve written several essays about beauty over the years, be they definitional or in comparison with ugliness[i], but I have to admit that I hadn’t considered whether ethics might sometimes be involved with its manifestation, its production. In my youthful naïveté, I suppose I thought of beauty as an inherent quality -something that was an emergent property, too complex to fully analyse- or alternatively, something involving personal taste, rather than something necessarily obvious in the object. The possibility that beauty could be artificially produced -worn like a mask, or influenced by its surroundings- seemed like cheating; it was not actual beauty, but a form of plagiarism. I was young in those days, and blissfully unaware that sometimes copying was what one had to do to fit in.

My own advancing age, though, has taught me that appearance, however artificially enhanced, is often important for acceptance. The years are sometimes unkind to skin, for example: how it shapes a face; how it can alter the credibility of an opinion -or perhaps, even, hint at the possibility of a waning intellect. Beauty, it seems, can be multifaceted.

The contents of beauty products are now beginning to be ethically scrutinized by many ecologically-minded users. Everything from the plastics in which they may be wrapped, to the chemicals used, along with their effect on the environment on disposal, and even whether the growing and harvesting methods are sustainable. Much as with food waste, the beauty industry is also beginning to wonder about what should be done with its surplus or discontinued products. Is cleanliness a basic right, for example? And, would it make sense to donate any excess products that would likely be thrown away, to those who could not otherwise afford them? Young people, who are anyway notoriously conscious of what their peers think, have been known to skip school rather than show up in class with dirty hair, or unwashed clothes[ii].

Beauty -or the need to acquire it- can also lead to mental health issues which are sometimes not easily confessed to those who are closest to us. It could be the embarrassment of our perceived lack of coping skills, or even the unlikelihood of ever acquiring sufficient allure that is causing us stress. It may sometimes seem easier to discuss our problems with a friendly stranger who is not likely to discuss them with anybody close to us.

And it is in this search for beautification that many problems may surface and be detected by caring, or trained observers who are disposed to active listening and perhaps capable of helping to reframe the problem in helpful and insightful ways.[iii]

Barbers do a lot of listening; it’s an occupational hazard, I imagine. Some of them initiate the conversation, but the good ones ask questions to engage with their customers. I admit that I have visited many barbershops over the years, but the ones I have usually enjoyed the most are the ones with the fewest barbers: the shops with only one barber I think are ideal. I feel special in those places: he (or occasionally she) is all mine for half an hour. I don’t mind waiting around now that I’m retired, and if I have to be in town for other purposes anyway, it is quite relaxing to sink into a comfortable chair with the melody of the erratic snipping of the scissors as a reassuring Zen haven in the city.

Occasionally, I listen to the rustle of the barber’s arms on the cape thrown over the client’s shoulders, but usually I end up reading old Maclean’s Magazine articles about important things which had happened in Canada years ago and about which I had totally forgotten. Sometimes, though, spoken words command my attention. For the customer in the chair, it’s as if for a short while, the barber’s chair is a separate world, a confidential world -much like the confessional booth might be to an errant Catholic.

What made me glance up from the Magazine  one day -furtively, of course- was the word ‘bullying’. The barber was an older woman, and her customer a young teenage boy with a mop of unruly and markedly tangled auburn hair.

“Yeah, sometimes at recess they pull it to see if it’s a wig…” the boy said, with a voice that was obviously journeying through the interregnum between that of a child and an adult. “And then,” he continued, “last week, one guy even held me on the ground while his friend plastered it with mud to ‘smooth it out’, he said.”

The barber shook her head slowly. “So what did you do then, Jamie?”

Jamie sighed. “What could I do? Everybody was standing around laughing at me -or maybe at them, it was hard to tell. Anyway, I figured I’d better go home and wash my hair -I mean, I couldn’t go back to class with dirty hair…”

“What did your parents say when you got home?”

He shrugged his shoulders, careful not to move his head. “They both work during the day, so I didn’t tell them.”

The barber stopped snipping for a moment in surprise. “Why not, Jamie? If I were your mother I’d have marched right down to the Principal’s office and complained.”

“That would have embarrassed me, Pauline. And anyway, those guys would have waited for me after school and beat me up -called me a sissy, or whatever…”

The barber started on his hair again. “Do you think you’re a sissy, Jamie?” she asked in a soft voice that I had trouble hearing.

He tried to shake his head, but she gently persuaded him to keep it still. “It doesn’t matter what I think.” He thought about it for another moment. “I think my curly hair was just another excuse to bully me… They think I’m gay,” he finally admitted after a few seconds.

Pauline slowed the progress of her scissors to give him more time to consider if he wanted to say anything more about that.

“Actually,” he added, after another moment’s reflection. “I just like curly hair…” He took a deep breath, this time careful not to move his head. “I don’t think I’m gay, Pauline. I just have different interests than most of the kids.” He hesitated for a second or two. “Nothing wrong with that, is there?”

Pauline started snipping away in reply. “Most of us have different interests, Jamie. That’s what makes us appealing to others. I’d be bored if everybody was the same, wouldn’t you?”

He attempted a nod, and she let him get away with a small one. “But…”

She was silent, waiting to see if he was  going to continue. When it became clear he wasn’t, she said, “But what…?”

“But, suppose…”

She waited patiently, snipping slowly all the while.

“Suppose I really am gay…”

She waited again, but it was clear he was troubled with the idea. Finally, all of the cutting done, she massaged his scalp. “Nothing wrong with being gay is there?” she asked, and what I could see of his face in the mirror visibly relaxed.

“I suppose not… But don’t tell anybody we talked about it, eh?” He was quiet for a moment. “I was just worried about it, that’s all,” he added to make sure she understood…

“Jamie,” she said, pulling the big grey cape off his shoulders with a practiced flourish, and then giving him a hug. “Barbers only listen, dear.”

[i] https://musingsonwomenshealth.com/2018/12/26/beauty-is-but-a-vain-and-doubtful-good

[ii] https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220315-inside-the-ethical-beauty-and-self-care-boom

[iii] Ibid.

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