A Little Pair of Scissors, A Big Difference

Friday morning at 8:25 is my favorite time of every week. In fact I do my best to be right on time, if not just a few minutes late to work, to ensure that I catch StoryCorp on my ride. If you’re not familiar with StoryCorp, it’s a venue for people to tell vignettes of their lives. Imagine two people walking into a booth and sharing a meaningful story from their past for two or so minutes. It seems like such a simple concept, but it’s so moving. Often bringing a tear to my eye or prodding me to immediately text my best friend (after I’ve safely parked, of course), and loyal StoryCorp listener, to say how much I loved the story.

This morning at 8:25 was no different.

A simple concept: haircuts.

A man who everyone calls Dreamer offers haircuts to Veterans in a trailer in the parking lot outside the VA in Los Angeles. Over the past year or so, he’s acquired an apprentice of sorts, a vet Paul Crowley. Crowley, a former client, says to Dreamer, “I was totally out of hope. And part of that was the way I looked. I hadn't shaved in a couple of weeks; my hair was filthy and scraggly… But getting the haircut made me feel, for lack of a better word, 'normal' — which I hadn't in a long, long time.”

After hearing this story, my brain jumped to a passage in the book Sex God by Rob Bell (Don’t worry, it’s not risqué at all. Quite the opposite, in fact).

He recounts a story of a British Colonel who is part of a team that liberates a Nazi concentration camp in Germany. In his diary, the Colonel paints a picture of the despair and terror of the camp that we’re all too familiar with. But then he starts talking about how a big box of lipstick arrived:

: This was not at all what we wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don’t know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips… At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.

It’s just a haircut and lipstick, but is it? Bad hair days, or weeks, or months send me into a funk, that’s for sure. And I can totally understand the refreshing feeling of getting a haircut. Besides being enjoyable, it does make you feel better, more put together, like yourself.

It’s no different for the women at Serenity Place. In fact all of those positive feelings associated with haircuts, or feeling comfortable in your own body, are probably enhanced due to their backgrounds. You’ve heard many of our women’s stories, so you know that for these women, living in active addiction has been nothing short of hell on earth. Bell describes a living hell as “void of any love or peace or beauty or meaning.” Living such a life puts a lot of things on your mind, but not haircuts, or self-care.

A couple months ago we highlighted a loving and committed volunteer, Karen Patel, who by day is a stylist at To Dye For, a local salon. By night, she’s a dose of humanity for the women at Serenity Place. She serves our women by making them feel normal and beautiful again. She teaches them to care for themselves again. And like most stylists, she becomes a great friend.

It’s not just a haircut and lipstick. Not at all. For our clients it’s a little step towards a makeover, not just in terms of appearance, but in terms of life.