Marcia. Marcia. Marcia.
Not in “The Brady Bunch” way. In the “I just walked out of the hair salon and my hairdresser Marcia has done it again,” way.
Until I was about 16, I went to Supercuts — the OG that gets the job done. But, when you’re a 16-year-old sophomore in high school and your mom says “maybe you should start going to Marcia,” you think: You know what, maybe I should start going to Marcia.
My mom is one of those gals who trusts her hairdresser with her life. She met Marcia at one salon and traveled with her to all of the salons that she went to after that — no matter how far across the land. The land — pause for glitter effect — being the Greater Boston Area.
That’s the beauty of the relationship between a woman and her hairdresser. It is often one of the most loyal relationships a woman will know.
When the time came for me to put my big girl wig on (obviously a joke, this is all real, haters) and start seeing Marcia, she felt like a distant relative that I had yet to meet.
This is always an interesting conundrum — meeting someone you feel like you know but you don’t really know yet.
Maybe this was just an interesting conundrum for me because I knew my mom had already told her some questionable things about me: I was in an improv comedy group, I probably needed to switch out of Honors Geometry, etc.
Still, in the grand scheme of things, meeting someone new is not easy for me. For whatever reason, I felt a major sense of dread on that first day with Marcia, especially when mentally preparing myself for an hour of small talk in the chair.
But, to my surprise, I was not met with an hour of small talk. I was met with an hour of Marcia.
Marcia wears tasteful bodycon dresses and wedges to work every single day. She is in her 60s and has the coolest white hair you’ve ever seen, which is always blown out to perfection. Sometimes, you see some of the other hairdressers doing their blowouts in between customers. Not Marcia. Her hair somehow stays flawless throughout the day with absolutely no touch-ups necessary.
Above all, the most compelling thing about Marcia is that she not only gets people, but she cares about them. My mom told me that she goes to cancer patients’ homes and cuts their hair when they’re undergoing chemo and do not feel comfortable coming into the salon. I mean, come on. Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.
Marcia will take you back to the chair and sit you down. She’ll smile at you and tell you that your natural hair color is perfect and that you should never, under any circumstance, touch it with dye. This will make you never want to dye your hair. After seeing Marcia, be prepared to develop a serious superiority complex.
Then, she’ll ask you what you’re looking to do. She’ll say she wants to take it up an inch higher than you were thinking and you will nod along. You aren’t nodding along just to be nice, you are nodding along because this is Marcia, and you believe her with every fiber of your being. That extra inch needs to go. It’s weighing you down like a bowling ball, actually.
After you get your hair washed (holy crap, Supercuts spray bottle could never), Marcia will begin the cutting process. As she snips away, she will ask you all about your grandma, grandpa, your hopes and your dreams.
She will tell you that your dream of going to London sounds really good and that you should go to France while you’re abroad because, “haven’t you ever wanted to try a French baguette in France?”
You know what, Marcia? I quite frankly would love to try a French baguette in France.
She’ll bring up sushi. Marcia once told me that she had the best sushi of her life in New York and felt that it healed her more than any of those “western medications.”
Then, a swift change of subject to baseball will follow. She’ll ask if you love the Red Sox — yes I do, Marcia! Yes, it’s so fun to go to the ballpark and it’s easy to follow but, oh, yes, sometimes it does drag a bit. What’s that movie? Fever Pitch? The Rom Com with Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore! I love that movie, too!
Then, in the blink of an eye, the blow dryer will shut off and you’re looking in the mirror at someone new. It’s your face but with a shiny and sweet little haircut that Supercuts never quite got right.
You’ll thank Marcia, but she’ll just nod like it’s nothing. But it’s not nothing. It was all quite something.
Now, after five years, I won’t say it has been all sunshine and lollipops. Marcia has made me look mother-of-three-adjacent with her extra-inch-rule, but the reason I keep going back is not just because she is good at her job. I go back because Marcia made a once socially-avoidant girl a merely socially-awkward and good at small talk girl.
I owe it to her, I really do. My hairdresser Marcia. Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.
