The Ladies' Hairdresser

Who has seen woman before the hairdresser, submitting meekly to the work of his hands!

Who has seen the beautiful and the plain, the young and the old!

Who has seen her facing that arrogant man — grumbling at the length of her hair if she wants it short, belittling its loose fall if she wants it braided, and mocking her jet-black tresses if he detects in her a leaning toward golden strands!

Here, at the hairdresser's, woman renounces her sovereignty, casts off her power of conquest and domination, and yields contentedly to the deft fingertips that produce a Bilqis every hour and turn out, from one moment to the next, a likeness of Cleopatra!

This giant walking among the nine women, toying with their heads as he pleases — what passes through his own head about the brains before him? Does he ascribe to them a shortness of thought, an inability to break free of their bounds, and trace it in the wavy locks upon their shoulders, let down gently over the forehead here and there!

This man who holds in his hand the key to the cave of beauty, whose lips are sealed upon the secrets of charm and majesty — how does he picture woman in his mind? How can he believe that she who submits to him is an intellectual sovereignty and a spiritual kingdom, drawing upon the intelligence of her heart!

Here nature melts away, spontaneity of form shrinks, and polished artifice settles in through every single hair of which the head is so mightily proud!

Here is fertile pasture for dreams. What woman of middle years has not hastened to him, to gather up the gray that has crept deep into the parting of her hair, and to confine the white that points to the rout of her youth — that his sinful fingertips might spare her tender self. How can woman consent to become middle-aged?!

Here the resolve of adventure crystallizes!

The blonde strives to turn the yellow of her hair to darkness and black; the chestnut-haired woman turns her color to a bright red; and all are driven by the hope of the creative experiment. Can woman ever be content, for long, with monotony of appearance?!

What do you say, O hairdresser, of woman's steadfastness as she sits beneath the "hair dryer," that dreadful machine, for monotonous hours!

Do you not marvel at her patience and submission, as you move slowly from this head to that! How can you not bless her sickly attraction to beauty, as she sits, face flushed, breath panting, head bowed, for long hours! It is one thing, and one only, that woman asks of you whenever she comes to you!

That you stretch out to her the skilled hand — to restore nature's original stock, to prune the sharpness of its errors, and to erase by harmony whatever you can of discord and plainness!

So ask something of her in return, O hairdresser...

Beautify for her her face, her hair, and her hands... and ask her to polish her spirit and her mind with simplicity, love, and knowledge...

Ask her, O sovereign over her form, why — she who is the very model of patience and deliberateness — she never casts a glance about a laboratory, why no invention ever visits her thought, why she does not nobly submit to the hardships of science and experiment!

And why her head does not warm to great, well-furnished imagination — she who looks constantly into the polished mirror, seeing in it the comeliness of the brow and the wonder of the hair falling over it!

And how should she not glory — she who, in her submission to adornment, represents the whole caravan of women in the history of the earth. Does she not feel, before you, the drawing together of the ages, seeing before her the Queen of Sheba, Catherine the Second, and Victoria... or does she remember Sukayna bint al-Husayn — she who created the flowing coiffure as her own signature, which women took as a model to imitate, until its glory reached even the men, who copied it submissively!

Tell woman to invent, like Sukayna — not to go on thus referring the whole matter of her appearance to you!

And you, O hairdresser... take all these womanly forms, scrutinize them closely, and read with your discernment the lines of the souls folded within them...

If one of noble soul comes to you, add to her nobility the elegance of countenance; and if one of coarse taste and boorish inner nature is thrown your way... disfigure her appearance and tamper with her head as you please...

And if the gray-haired crone comes to you asking gaudy counterfeit for the furrows of her brow... asking you to trace the routed remnants of black hairs upon her head... then, if you sense within her the seeds of a barren past... set all the gray in her hair ablaze; but if you find the marks of a past whose hours are clothed in goodness and righteousness, then grant the living soul an everlasting youth...

Be better than your mirror, O hairdresser... Let the lifeless mirror show the charms of face and hair, and their flaws; and reflect, yourself, what the depths conceal and what the ribs enfold!

Make the features speak of what lies behind them... Show us the marks of the false woman by the exaggerated adornment you bestow upon her... and point us to the upright woman by spontaneity of proportion and sweetness of harmony.

Be a reforming judge... for what one enchanting word from you can do, the words of guidance from the mouths of reformers cannot!

Do you know this, O maker of beauty?!