My days of tonsorial splendour are long past. The very act of going to the local barbershop to get a haircut has become an infrequent chore. I find myself much more comfortable in a shaggy and hirsute state than sitting in modern version of a barber's chair at the local "hair stylist" while someone I really don't know stands behind me with a sharp pair of scissors cutting my hair the way he or she thinks it should be instead of the way I want it to be cut.
But, as a young sprite, my trips to the barbershop were a twice monthly event. And while I never enjoyed having my hair cut, I did enjoy waiting my turn because it gave me a chance to read the magazines the shop subscribed to for the customers.
At that time, a barbershop was a man's domain. It was expected that boys be brought into the shop by their fathers. A woman who brought her son in was a oddity. It either meant that the woman was divorced or the boy was a mama's boy; neither of which was considered a desirable condition for a boy. The shops sold three types of hair oil; Vitalis, Wildroot and Lucky Tiger. And there was one brand of butch wax for the trendy types who wore flattops; Three Roses. It was an old time masculine atmosphere where cigarettes were smoked, off-color jokes were told, black coffee was drunk and baseball was on the radio during the summer.
The magazines at the barbershops were men's magazines that fell into three categories; sports, outdoor sports and adventure. At that time professional sports, except for baseball, had not reached the popularity that they since have. The Sporting News (the Bible of Baseball) was sure to be found with traces of clipped hair in its pages. Sports Illustrated was iffy. Professional athletics were, at that time, of not much interest to your faithful correspondent. Outdoor Life and Field and Stream were sure bets to be found. Neither of those journals were of much interest to me since the only hunting I'd ever done was stalking the odd English sparrow with a slingshot and fishing was an experience of sitting in the hot sun watching the fish swim past my worm. It was the collection of adventure magazines that made the sound of Wahl hair clippers bearable. Argosy, Saga, Stag, Men's Bluebook and Men Only. Those were the magazines that opened a world to yours truly. Playboy and Esquire were considered a little too risque for the average barbershop in those days, but we had, even on the West Coast, Midwestern values in those days.
Argosy and Saga were the topline men's magazines. They were the Saturday Review of men's magazines. Stag, Men's Bluebook and Men Only which were more on a Life magazine or National Enquirer level. The magazines, while having a little mild cheesecake (Jayne Mansfield in a bikini or Stella Stevens wearing less than her mother would have liked, but not so little as to get arrested at the beach), emphasized adventure, conflict and a certain stoicism. They were full of real life stories such as, "My Twelve Years in the Foreign Legion", "Surviving the Alaskan Wilderness with Only a Can of Hamm's and a Church Key" and "I Arrested Tokyo Rose." The last was usually illustrated with a photo of a woman who looked much more like Joan Chen than Eva Toguri. Technical articles were things like "Tune Your Car with a Matchbook Cover and a Pocketknife." The magazines had short stories of the Jack London type i.e., man against nature, man against man, man against himself. And there was usually a short story about a dog or horse doing great things such as routing Germans out of the trenches during World War I or stomping rattlesnakes. The magazines were, in their own way, about conflict and the conflict of being a man in a hostile world. There was no machismo attitude and, really, there wasn't much sexism. Being a man was, in a sense, pitching oneself against other men or nature. Women were the civilizing force, and thus were regarded somewhat suspiciously, but they were a sort of dessert to a rough life. Maybe they were sexist, but not in a way that is now commonly understood. The magazines reflected a sort of Hemingwayesque ethos without the excesses.
Robin Maugham, the nephew of the unfortunately forgotten writer W. Somerset Maugham, once wrote an article for Men Only about his experience of buying a slave in the Sudan and then setting the man free, much to the man's confusion. There was a sort of social conscious that didn't stick itself in one's face. The magazines reflected a particularly American outlook of life. All men were, in essence, equal. A man was expected to make, as far as possible, his own way, and try to help others make their own way. An enemy, usually a German, a Japanese, a North Korean, a Russian or a Chinese, while considered brainwashed, a bounder or just plain stupid, was considered another man capable of reformation. In this way, despite their occasionally risque content, they were, in a sense, Christian magazines: man is sinful by nature and is capable of redemption.
The last time I was at the barbershop, after looking over the magazine selection, I wondered if I hadn't stumbled into the beauty parlor. The magazines consisted of Sports Illustrated (despite the swimsuit issue, a poor second to the Sporting News), FHM, Maxim, GQ and some other silly thing. The men's magazines had been replaced by lads' magazines. The stories featured on the covers were things like "Six Pack Abs in Two Weeks", "Finding the Style for You", "Should You Shave your Body?" and "Your Orgasm: Is it Good for Her?" In other words, the magazines that are supposed to be for men had become Cosmopolitan for people with external ganglia. While there were a few photos of pretty girls wearing not much, most of the magazines had features about how to look "good" i.e., pretty, how to be sensitive, how to be cool. There wasn't a whole lot about the experience of being a man battling his way through the world. Consider the fact that the Drinks section of one of the magazines featured recipes for mixing the "perfect martini", "the best margueritta", "the divine tequila sunrise." It was enough to gag a maggot.
In the great days of Argosy and Saga the only advice in the Drinks section were questions of how many drops of water to put in a whisky and water, or whether gin and tonic was a drink for girls. Now the lads' mags give recipes for drinks that were at one time considered women's drinks. And the recipes are intended for the consumption by men.
Since the last presidential primary I've been hearing this word "metrosexual." Howard Dean said that he was a metrosexual. Metrosexuality is considered by some of our national scribes to be a good thing. I've neither read nor heard a definition of metrosexual, but I assume that it means a man of a somewhat amorphous sexuality as reflected by Maxim, FHM, et al. In other words, the contemporary man is expected to become a precious of the 18th century French type; narcissistic, mincing, prancing. And the guy who fights the world to provide for his and his own is considered a dumb lug.
It's enough to make a guy give up haircuts.
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