Strong language (for mature audiences only). Reader discretion is advised.
2018, North Carolina
“Guys don’t want fat Asian girls!” yelled my Korean hairdresser at me. “They want skinny Asian girls!”
I sat forlornly in the salon chair, gazing down. Remnants of my clipped black hair lay haphazardly strewn across the linoleum floor. I could feel my chin sinking deeper into the soft, doughy roll of my shapeless neck. My breasts shriveled inside their bra cups. My ears burned hot with shame.
“I’m not trying to say that you’re BIG….” her voice trailed. I could feel my hairdresser’s eyes glaring at my belly through the nylon neck apron.
She was trying to say that I was big. I knew she wanted to cut me open and carve out my abdominal pork fat like a slab of raw bacon.
I came for a haircut at the local Korean hair salon that morning, to trim my dead ends and symbolically start a fresh, exciting new chapter in my dating life. I had initially walked in with an extra “pep” in my step, excited about the prospect of an upcoming date. His name was Nash* and he was a handsome 21-year old. I had “matched” with him through a dating app on my smartphone. We chatted over text and would be meeting in a few days. Nash would be my first date in over nine years, and I was thrilled beyond words! A date! At 42, someone was actually interested in me!
The thing about Korean hairdressers, is that they “tell it like it is.” They are part-therapist, part-preacher, part-mother-in-law critic. They don’t candy-coat anything, and they are convinced that they are doing you a favor by exposing you to the truth, as you ought to see it – for the sake of self-improvement. After all, isn’t it every Korean woman’s goal, to get married?
“Why aren’t you married?”
“Why don’t you at least have a boyfriend?”
“When is the last time you dated?”
“Do you go to church? Why not?”
“Did you grow up in America? Oh, that explains why your Korean-speaking really sucks.”
The interrogations feel as though they last for hours, and no personal questions or feelings are spared.
My Mother would support my testimony on this. She once came home looking completely crumbled, like a little girl who had just been beaten up by bullies in a school yard. She, too, had gone to a Korean hairdresser to get her hair done. While getting dolled up, the hairdresser had gazed at my Mother’s face and stated, “You would be so pretty….if only you didn’t have that scar on your face.”
My Mother wanted to burst into tears! That “scar” that the hairdresser was referring to, was the remnant of a cleft lip that my Mother had been born with, in South Korea. For years, she had to bear the humiliation of being teased for the deformity that had left a large, open split on her upper lip. For 18 years, she lived with the torment of being “different” than everyone else. Her older brother had also been born with a cleft lip, but his had been fixed at an early age—hers was not. She became a social outcast, forced to stay at home to cook and clean, while she watched her four siblings go to school every day, without her.
When my Mother’s oldest sister moved to Germany to study nursing, my Mother’s prayers for a new face were finally answered. Her sister had sent money as a gift, so that my Mother could have her cleft lip surgically closed. Although her physical wound was repaired—with minimal scarring that was hardly noticeable—the painful years of incessant teasing and bullying still left a gaping emotional wound that had never quite healed. My Mother wanted so much to be beautiful, and years later—even after several plastic surgery procedures on her face, I don’t know if she ever truly accepted herself.
One might reasonably ask, “Why then, do Korean women keep going back to their sadistic Korean hairdressers?” The simple fact is, Asian hair is surprisingly difficult to cut (the right way). Korean hairdressers know this, so they have a monopoly on the hair market. Believe me, in the past I have tried to get my hair cut at non-Asian salons, but typically came out looking like a disheveled mophead from the dollar store. So if I want to look good, I really have no choice: my Korean hairdresser owns me like a wench.
“You need to go on Jenny Craig!,” my Korean hairdresser continued to bark at me. “It took me a year to lose 40 pounds, but I did it! I went for a fast walk every day, and didn’t eat past 6 o’clock at night, and got my boobs done. Now my boobs are so perky, I don’t even need to wear a bra—see?” She looked at me in the mirror, to see if I would look up and gaze at her breasts. I sat motionless in my seat, with my eyes still glued to the floor. I REFUSED to stare at her chest—the situation was bizarre enough. No need to turn up the dial on the craze-o-meter.
“Once I lost weight, so many men started asking me for my phone number!,” she stated exuberantly, with wide eyes. “I eventually met my future-husband and got married! He’s very handsome—I got so lucky! You can find someone and get married, too—but first you need to go on Jenny Craig, TODAY!!!”
When my Korean hairdresser finally finished verbally whipping me with humiliation—all in the name of wise advice, of course, in the hopes that I might someday lure a future husband—I slithered out of my chair like a spent snake. I paid her $45 for the haircut, and an absurdly large tip as “hush money”—so that she wouldn’t label me as a cheap bastard to other gossipy small-town folks (word gets around!). It would have been more appropriate for HER to pay ME, for having to put up with her bullshit while she destroyed my self-esteem….but I digress. This is the Korean way of life: I was born into self-abused-ness, and have grown accustomed to it.
At least my new haircut looked good.
*Real name withheld, for privacy purposes.