Never go to the supermarket when you’re hungry, yep, got it. But has anyone ever warned you never to go to the hairdresser when you’re stressed? Both times, you’ll come back with things you don’t need – a family-size trifle for one, say, or the undercut you didn’t get at 15 – and spend the next hour or month cussing out your own lack of foresight. But props to my hairdresser, an intensely young and chic Kiwi-Lebanese guy called Brixton, who took my instruction to “change everything” and thankfully distracted me by cutting in a fringe. Groundbreaking, I know.
Still, I’ve felt for Brixton and his colleagues all over, who seemed to have had to endure all manner of lunacy from their customers in the days running up to a second lockdown. The panicked demands and unrealistic expectations for A Whole New Look is one thing, but the role of therapist with scissors is a bit much.
Hairdressers get a lot of flak for making inane chat but no one ever talks about how much they have to listen to their customers. Covid-conspiracy theorists, for one, seem to be in strong supply in the salons of central London. And it’s not just what they’re saying, I’m told, it’s the breezy bullshitter’s confidence with which some customers will sell an opinion they saw get 53 likes on Facebook. How do you bite your tongue and not snip an ear here or there?
Brixton’s method is to feign curiosity and keep asking questions; he says that if he asks people to explain the holes in their argument enough times, eventually it falls apart. Like hair.
A long week in Dallas
What does relief feel like? In this instance, a slow but short release of breath while your body maintains a tension too taut to uncoil quickly. My sister, who has lived in Texas for 24 years, has been waiting to exhale for months. She has raised a family, made a marriage, a home and built a business and a life in the States, but says little has come close to the tight spring of stress inflicted by the double whammy of the pandemic and the election. It’s been a long week together over the phone.
Like everyone else, I’m estimating I’ve averaged 11 years of screentime since Monday, doomscrolling between WhatsApp and Twitter, news feeds and memes. She has had rolling news on through the house from morning to night.
I’ve been to stay in Texas more than 20 times and even on a superficial level know how tension has ramped up and warped Dallas over the last presidency. The past four years have undoubtedly been fraught and ugly; hate crimes have risen in the Metroplex while new shooting ranges keep popping up in the suburbs: Dallas is a bizarre place. Deeply segregated neighbourhoods – and thinking – remain one of its biggest problems. Never more so than now.
It’s not that either of us expected a tidal wave of victory – my sis lives in Collin County, which last voted Democrat in 1964, and she held little truck with the projected fantasy that the state would turn blue. But has a win needed so desperately ever felt so subdued? In part, it’s the logistics of the count and the sore pettiness of Potus, true. But it’s also the glaring fact that while things will feel better, the fight for a fairer future isn’t over – it needs an entire rethink. Unity and solidarity don’t come easily - just look at half the country. Despite the pink hats, pussies grabbing back and promises to “do the work”, 55% of white women still voted the other way.
• Nosheen Iqbal is an Observer columnist
