About Rebecca Eckler
Since becoming pregnant with her daughter Rowan, Canadian journalist and author Rebecca Eckler has penned three hilarious books, including the best-selling Knocked Up. Catch Rebecca’s weekly unique perspective on motherhood and single parenthood.
How Much Is Too Much For a Kid's Haircut?
eckler plus one canada
(Jan.14.10)
I like to talk about my daughter’s hair. A LOT. This is because for, um, the first FOUR years of her life, she barely had any hair.
She laughs when I tell stories of how people used to tell me what a “cute little boy” I had. It’s true. For at least the first two, if not three, years of her life, she did look like a very pretty boy. She was bald, bald, bald.
Even now, I sigh longingly at my friends' daughters' who have hair down the middle of their backs.
My daughter’s hair has slowly grown at the pace of a snail. I always figured, well, even though she didn’t have much hair, or maybe because she didn’t have much hair, what she did have might as well look good.
So my daughter has been getting regular haircuts since she was three. Again, because she barely had any hair, almost always hairdressers wouldn’t charge me to trim her locks. Or, rather, lack of locks.
She’d always come with me, when I got my hair cut, and I say, “Could you just trim hers as well?” Quite literally, my daughter’s haircuts would take five minutes.
Time and time again, all hairdressers who have trimmed my daughter’s hair have told me that, generally, young children who don’t have a lot of hair usually grow up to have thick hair. I’m not sure I believe it, but it’s nice to hear anyway.
So I was quite literally shocked after I took her for a haircut over the weekend. I didn’t ask how much her haircut would cost beforehand, because I am so used to her getting free ones.
But, apparently, my daughter now looks like a girl. Her hair ALMOST reaches her shoulders.
My daughter got a trim. She looked great. The whole thing took maybe 15 minutes. The cost?
Sixty dollars!
That’s right! Sixty dollars to trim my six year-old’s hair! As an adult, I’m often appalled at the expensiveness of women’s haircuts. But, you know, you don’t want to screw around with your hair. As long as it looks good, fine, charge me $120.
There’s this one photo my mother has of me with my three brothers. I had a bowl cut (It was the late 70s/early 80s and my mother cut my bangs. She has many skills, my mother, but cutting hair is NOT one of them.)
In any case, I knew once I became a mother there was no way in hell I’d ever cut my daughter’s hair. EVER. The trauma of my mother cutting my hair still lingers - as do the photos - and I don’t want to do that to my daughter.
But sixty dollars?
On the one hand, I should be happy that she has hair now and looks like a girl. But that also means that I’m now being charged $60 for a “girl’s cut.”’
Is it just me, or is that totally outrageous?