Her Hair Smoothing Story

Hair, sibling rivalry, parenting, economics, and nutrition. It’s just hair. Or is it?

Last month, I took my thirteen-year-old daughter Sivakami for a hair smoothening procedure that I had myself had a few months earlier. My hair which was prone to hair fall had become silky and manageable over the three-hour procedure. I wanted Sivakami to experience the same “I love my hair!” feeling.

Any kid would love to have their hair turned from a tangled mess into a sheet of silk.

Right?

Well…..

The truth is, Sivakami never wanted a hair smoothening procedure. She wanted her hair cut short, to her shoulders.

I love the way she looks in long hair and I was desperate enough to spend the ₹4000, or $53.99 of the procedure cost upon her hair to try and change her mind.

In case you think $53.99 is peanuts, let me try and put it into perspective for you.

This is India, and $53.99/₹4000 could buy you a root canal, which costs around $1000 in the USA.

₹4000 could also buy a four-person family’s groceries in India for a month, and that includes coffee and chocolates. ₹4000 is, therefore, an insane amount of money to spend on the hair of a thirteen-year-old child who only wanted her hair “cut off”, a process which costs hardly ₹100 (less than a couple of dollars.)

So why’d I do it?

One thing was, I was sorry for Sivakami who had been slaving over her second weekly exams. She’s diligent and hardworking, and I wanted to reward her with a hair-feels-like-silk-thrill that I myself had loved.

Also: I didn’t want her to get her hair cut! I wanted Sivakami’s hair long. Yes, I wanted control over her hair length.

My elder daughter, Gayatri, had had her hip-length hair lopped off to a boy cut a couple of years ago, when she was sixteen, without as much as a by-your-leave, and had come home from the parlor looking so different I would wait for her to speak to confirm to myself that yes, indeed, the unfamiliar-looking individual trashing my cooking certainly sounded like my own daughter.

Did I do the right thing by bribing Sivakami with smoothening to convince her not to get her hair cut as Gayatri had done?

Well, well and well.

No, I did not.

First mistake: Sivakami never wanted smoothening! I should have just allowed the hair to be cut. Even though her hair is silkier now, it is still long enough to need more care than shorter, natural hair.

School got canceled after Omicron. One reason for the hair smoothing was for me to braid her long hair quickly before school. Most days, Sivakami just ties up her hair into a ponytail herself with no input from me and logs onto her online classes.

Second mistake: I allowed my elder daughter — Gayatri — to realize that I had hated her hairstyle of the last two years (she kept the boy cut) so much that I would go to great lengths to avoid having the same hairstyle in her younger sister.

A fallout: the elder one started to wail that if the smoothening had been done on her hair when she was as young as the younger one is now (my daughters have a five-year age gap between them) then she would never have had her own hair cut at all, and would have been able to dazzle everyone with a full head of hair and look very stylish. She also started to mentally “spend” the ₹4000 in so many ways that it started to make my head spin about what a debacle, what a disaster, the entire exercise had been.

Gayatri’s and Sivakami’s negative reactions to Sivakami’s hair procedure that not only cost me money but also, in fact, turned out well — made me wonder. Was my family having buyer’s remorse? Was this a purchase like that of an expensive silk saree which you love, and which feels wonderful against the skin, but you hate yourself for buying it, you feel selfish because of all the good the money could have done, and once you get used to the feel of silk, every cotton saree just feels limp and cheap against the skin — forcing you to splurge on silk each time.

Had I just raised expectations and ruined my daughters, psychologically scarring them for how perfect hair ought to look? Or had I introduced them to a lifetime of never being judged as frizzy, unkempt, and “simple” — the Indian word for unsophisticated and earthy?

Was frizzy hair genuine and natural, while a smooth mane of silk reeked of privilege? Was I setting up my kids to be judgmental and demanding?

Ouch!

I asked a couple of my friends their opinion, and here’s what they said.

A nutritionist friend said that getting a child’s hair done professionally was cheating. At thirteen, children should be motivated to have healthy food that makes their hair look good, too.

A day trader friend said that my daughter would be set up for failure as an entrepreneur if her initial expenses on her own hair would be so high, because by the time she entered the job market, salon services would be even more expensive. After our interaction, she also wished Indian salon stocks would list on the market, their services were irresistible.

What do you think?