Archimedes discovered his hydrostatic principle while sloshing about in the tub. I too had my “Eureka!” moment, when I suddenly realized why men throw themselves into their careers more wholeheartedly than women. The epiphany struck on a family vacation when my son announced he was going for a haircut. I pointed to the book he was carrying.
“What’s that about?” I asked.
“It’s a study of social conservatism in the United States during the …”
“No, I mean why are you taking a book to the barber?”
“To read while he cuts my hair.”
“But then he’ll think you don’t want to talk to him.”
“Duhh.”
Eureka. No wonder men are so unconflicted. They set the terms of social exchange with their barbers. Some yack it up, but others guiltlessly read, write or marinate ideas in silence during their haircuts. What a fantastic concept! I would no more think of insulting my hairdresser by reading a book or sitting quietly thinking during a styling than Blackberrying at the dinner table (where, come to think, my son sometimes …).
If it were only about haircuts, the difference between men and women would be nugatory. But while not a buffing diva, I can’t consider myself fit for human society without a monthly round of hair colouring, stylings and pedicures, not to mention a fake-nails tune-up every three weeks. Add occasional facials and other detailing, and that’s more than 70 hours a year of grooming as opposed to a man’s six.
Six hours of tonsorial rumination is the equivalent of 12 Archimedean baths. But in order to satisfy the demands of the female social code, according to which more than 10 seconds of silence between two women acquainted with each other in any capacity whatsoever is a criminal violation, most of my 70 grooming hours—the equivalent of reading 20 New Yorkers, mapping out 10 columns, or incubating an entire murder mystery plot—is passed in desultory chitchat.
I say “most” because colourists leave you alone after the goop is applied, and for some reason pedicurists—perhaps because they are usually very young, or immigrants insecure with English, or sitting on low stools a critical social distance away—respect your silence.
I’m not sure how to put this in a delicate manner—but it is my observation that girls who gravitate to a career in female aesthetics, while intensely social, are not, hmm, how shall I say, the Mesdames de Stael of our sex? Brilliant badinage may dominate your salon, but in mine, notwithstanding my bottomless interest in human diversity, the richness of my buffers’ personal lives and extra-curricular wisdom can be plumbed within two appointments at most. Two years ago, defeated by the remorselessly repetitive and insipid gruel of her narrative stock, I actually dumped a perfectly competent manicurist.
And then by pure serendipity I discovered “Solange,” terminal boredom’s antidote. A crackerjack “nail technician” of Middle Eastern provenance, transparently candid Solange is the eldest of 12 children and the bourgeois rock of her family. Exotically fetching and svelte (a former fitness champ), she brims over with cautionary tales about her woe-prone siblings—truancies, arrests, babies carted away by social services, overdoses, relationship screw-ups: I could loiter forever, slack-jawed with wonder, on the fringes of Solange’s turbulent world.
When she’s not regaling her clients with a litany of improbable stories, the trilingual Solange conducts animated calls through her headphone cellular while she expertly fills, files, paints, and buffs: from her husband (“Hey, babe, love you too!”) or her chronically stressed mother (Arabic, can’t follow, but from the teary agitation I know it’s trouble), or social workers (“Comment? Ma soeur a encore une fois abandonne sa Rehab!!??”).
For my part, I arrive, plop down with fingers fanned, ingenuously inquire, “So what’s new, doll?”, and am then whisked away to a salon where books, New Yorkers, newspaper columns, and principles of natural law are all utterly immaterial.
I am forced to conclude that if Archimedes had been Archimedea, whether she was bored, bemused or beguiled by her chatty groomers, our bathwater would still overflow when we displaced it, but we’d consult some other ancient Greek’s Principle—a man free to sit quietly thinking while his slave clipped away, not to mention 70 more self-serving hours a year—to explain why.
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