The oldest known example of professional hair cutting in the western world comes from classical Greece. A finely groomed beard used to be a symbol of high social status, and beard-trimming was raised to a delicate art-form. The statesmen and aristocrats of ancient Greece regularly visited barber-shops to keep their appearance in sync with the stringent demands of their privileged positions. And so these barber-shops became important centres of socio-political debate as well as sources of information regarding matters of state. No doubt that the luxury of professional grooming was made possible by the relative economic prosperity achieved in the classical period, but like in most so-called prosperous historical periods there was widespread social and economic inequality. Under such circumstances, the differential affordability of expenses like personal grooming become the markers of the division between the haves and the have-nots.
During the late medieval and early modern periods, barbers were moved to the category of "barber-surgeons" who, in addition to attending to the grooming needs of people, had to perform more urgent medical tasks like minor surgeries and bloodletting, particularly after it was decreed by the council of Tours in 1163 that it was sacrilegous for the clergy to draw blood (in the literal sense). And when you fast-forward to the 21st century, you see that the cities of modern, industrialized nations are full of beauty salons that offer to take away some of your hair for a sum of money that could feed a poor family for a week. We have entered the age of cosmetic beauty, where not only are you to be judged by stereotyped standards of aesthetic acceptance (ask the dark-skinned girl who could not get a job as a flight attendant), but where the business of "beauty enhancement" is a multibillion-dollar industry in its own right. I guess it is time to wonder whether this is simply a consequence of greater prosperity, or the sign of a deep-seated cultural need to identify ourselves as the ruling elite who can afford expensive and wasteful modes of consumption in an increasingly bipolar world.
