Mid Week at Work: The Barber

For this week's entry on our occasional series, Mid Week At Work, we have a photograph of a barber, circa the 1940s.  Caption data indicates that this barber had been in business 14 years at the time that this photograph was taken.

Our entry today was inspired by another item posted today on shaving, as shaves are something that barbers routinely did up until the safety razor became predominate, and most barbers still offer saves.  I think I've only seen one do one once, which was on the occasion of a fellow with a big beard coming in to have it shaved off.

Barber Shops are an institution, although oddly enough not as common of one as they once were.  It would have been impossible up through the 1950s at least to imagine an era when there'd be fewer barbers than their used to be, but starting in the late 1970s that in facdt became the case.  It probably started off with the long hair fashion of the 1960s, which came in at fist as a fashion, then evolved (with hair length) into a species of hairy rebellion (witness the musical "Hair!") and then returned to being a fashion.  By the late 1970s all that hair saw the introduction of an occupation called a "hair stylist" which looked dangerously close to the existing occupation of "hair dresser" to most men who were 40 years old or older at the time.  In rural areas, hair stylist still looks suspiciously close to hair dresser to a lot of men, although the stylist seems here to stay.

With the stylist came the decline of the barber and the barber shop, which is a shame.  Barber Shops remain unique places.  In a world in which very few places remain strongly male or female, barber shops are male.  They always have been. That doesn't mean that women aren't welcome to walk in one, and you'll occasionally see women do just that, but when they do, they aren't there to have their hair done so much as to drop a kid off or sometimes to chat about one of the topics that are bastions of conversation in barber shops.

And bastions of conversation they are.  Sports are a huge topic in barber shops.  In rural areas outdoors activities are as well.  My barber and I usually converse hunting, fishing and automobiles, I don't know much about sports, although the barber shop is the one place that I might be able to learn a little about sports.   Barber Shops are also places of great social equality.  Every occupation needs their hair cut, and Barber Shops have always been places where professions and occupations of all types mixed, side by side.  I've been in barber shops where, and I'm not joking, the clinically insane sat right next to lawyers, waiting for haircuts.  And I've seen everything from heavily tattooed roughnecks to Catholic Priests waiting for their turn at the chair. 

It's always surprised me that barber shops have declined because they are such unique institutions and because, quite frankly, economically they compete quite well with the stylists.  Perhaps they're something that we can hope for a revival of, in the future.