The Tao of Cutting Your Hair

By Kary Middenfern Broadside
Published on July 1, 1970
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Photo by Fotolia/Aaron Amat
Learning how to cut hair was a mini-gesture of dissent against the technocratic society that insists we have to go to an expert for everything we need rather than learn to do whatever needs to be done ourselves.

Reprinted with permission from Free Press. 

Two years ago I walked out of a barber shop, ticked off at the whole barbering trade and swearing I’d never pay a professional to cut my hair again.

I was so mad at the butchering I’d just received that I planned a one-man campaign against the haircutting trade: I would learn everything there was to know about cutting your hair, get really good at it, cut anybody’s hair the way they wanted it cut and do it for free.

I was hoping that other people would pick up on the idea of cutting your hair and, together, we’d put the barbering and hairstyling people out of business. It was a mini-gesture of dissent against the technocratic society that insists we have to go to an expert for everything we need rather than learn to do whatever needs to be done ourselves.

My roommate at that time was holding down a straight gig and had to keep his hair beaten back to a reasonable level, so I began to learn on him. My first efforts were major disasters, so I went to the library to see what there was on haircutting.

Most of the barbering books I found were written in 1843, but I did pick up some information: How to hold the scissors, how to aim them, what a blunt, shingle and layered cut was. Modern treatises were available for women’s hair styles, but most of these were more concerned with how to use human hair as a raw material like plastic (endless information on setting, teasing, lacquering, gluing, etc.) than with giving simple advice on cutting.

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