IT is a hairy issue with a damning prospect for a bad hair day. Hair is, after all, no laughing matter. “Some of the worst mistakes in my life were haircuts,” so said Jim Morrison, the American singer-songwriter known for his lustrous rockstar mane.
Take The Door’s frontman’s word with a pinch of salt, but the dearth of foreign barbers at Indian barbershops in the country could spell an impending doom to the Indian barber service industry and the horror of horrors, a future of perpetual bad hair days for many a discerning Malaysian man.
On Wednesday, the Malaysian Indian Hairdressing Salon Owners Association lamented that following the government’s policy on reducing the hiring of foreign workers, Indian barbershops are now living on borrowed time. Its treasurer, Jeyakumar Manokaran, said the price for a haircut could increase from RM10 to RM45 as a result of this policy review.
The move by the government, which also put the brakes on hiring of foreigners in other service sub-sectors, including laundrymen, textile shop assistants and goldsmiths, is to encourage the employment of locals in the sectors and stimulate growth in other economically-viable sectors.
In the United States, traditionally male-dominated jobs, like barbers, steel workers, farmers and miners, are fast disappearing. According to Business Insider, barbershops recorded an eight per cent decline in employment between 2013 and last year, with 76.2 per cent of industry players last year being men.
The rise of trendy “hipster” barbershops all over the world in recent years, targeting the more fashionably-discerning younger crowd, indicates that there is another side to this scenario.
And it is not all doom and gloom in our Tanah Pusaka. Local barbershops are flourishing in chic industrial shoplots and beautified villages, such as Kampung Baru, and the spruced-up back alleys of Bukit Bintang. It is a socio-economic boon with a promising growth potential and placing no emphasis on foreign workers.
In other parts of the world, the once male-dominated industry is seeing the age-old tradition being rewritten by the audacious gender-neutral winds of change.
According to Barber Agency, a specialist recruitment agency in the United Kingdom, two of the 10 curriculum vitae for the barbering sector had been from women applicants. Women barbers, like English-born Natalie Angold, 31, are also breaking the glass ceiling at barbering championships, gaining respect for their manscaping skills just like their male counterparts.
Take a walk down the stylishly Bohemian-chic North Lane in the seaside town of Brighton, the UK, and you will see female barbers getting the appointments for men’s beard trim or shave. From Los Angeles, the US, to Hong Kong, women barbers are running the businesses.
For an industry that was once labelled sexist, women barbers are breaking down the walls of machismo in the traditional barbering culture. Irish novelist, playwright and poet Oliver Goldsmith once wrote that: “To make a fine gentleman, several trades are required, but chiefly a barber.”
Indian barbershops in the country are like a fine gentleman with old school sensibilities — a dying breed that needs to change with the times.