Hairdressers

       One of my fellow woodworkers is a retired hairdresser. He's always in a good mood, and he's been very patient and helpful with my beginner questions. He's currently finishing up a planter for his garden, a square wooden box with knobs on the tops of the four corners, like the planters for orange and lemon trees at Versailles. Later this spring, he and his wife will take a trip to Vietnam. He's been to Thailand before, and thirty years ago, he even manage to go to Burma. I asked him what Burma was like. "Oh, it was interesting, but the people were so poor." He paused, then shook his head sadly. "And the food was terrible." Then he told me that he would really like to go to China one day, but not just for a week or two. His wife hasn't retired yet, so as soon as she does, he'll start planning a long trip in China.

        Doesn't it seem like he has a good life? Do retired hairdressers in the US and Canada also have the resources to travel abroad for weeks at a time?

Marie Antoinette

        I was at the Louvre recently, on a tour about women in the 18th century. Hairdressers back then did not have an easy job constructing the towering mountains of hair that adorned aristocratic women. Our guide told us that a sort of metal frame was worn on the head as the scaffold upon which to build a 1-3 foot tall superstructure of hair and ornaments. Guess what hairdressers used in the days before hairspray and gel to mold the hair into the desired shape? Butter!! UGH!!! They probably used vats of it too. At the end they powdered the whole thing in lots of flour and stuck in jewels or ornaments. It was all so elaborate that nobody washed their hair for weeks or months. Bathing any part of the body was not widely practiced at this time; even the king would only bathe once a year. Those butter and flour hairdos must have smelled good right after they were finished, but can you imagine the rancid stench after a few weeks or months? No wonder French people love perfume.

Salted or unsalted?

        Carrying a mound of butter, flour and hair around on the top of your head was not easy for daily activities like getting into carriages, or sleeping. The frames were constructed with a hinge so that upon getting into a carriage, a lady could gently unhinge the hair, bend it backwards, and thus enter the carriage without demolishing her precious hairdo on the frame of the carriage door. Once inside, sitting on the floor of the carriage, she could prop her hair up again. Sleeping was more problematic, as rodents had to be scared away from the tasty temptation of gnawing on all that stinky butter. Ladies who wanted to protect their hair slept semi-upright. There was a little table by their side and on that table there would be a container with morsels of cheese or other tasty food for mice and rats. This would prevent hungry rodents from crawling up to munch on one's hairdo while asleep. What an excellent precautionary measure.