Supercuts, like any hair cutting place, has these books you can look at to help you convey to the pro just what it is you want done with your hair. I thumbed through one of these today. This particular book had quite a lot of the before-and-after collages.
I hate these. Did you ever look closely at makeover montages? In the "before" pic, the victim is wearing nothing but clothing, and usually hideous clothing. I think the marketing people purposely pick really lousy clothing on purpose.
The individual is usually frighteningly blemished. If this is her actual adult onset acne, I feel sorry for her because, being an often acutely blemished person myself, I know what it feels like to look at a picture of yourself and see so much splotch on your face. And to have that image imprinted in a hardcover publication for posterity! Augh! But I suspect that the marketing people actually have the crew add extra spots in.
Now this occurs to me - this is a hair cutting book. Why the hell is all the attention on the complexion and clothing? It's for maximum makeover effect. They don't want you to care how much better her hair looks. They want you to care how much better she looks overall, and the best way to make it look like a collosal improvement is to make her look her absolute worst beforehand. The clothes and the skin help to drive home the message, which is, "Without us, you would look terrible."
So then we look at the "after" picture, and there she is in her radiant glory. If you look closely enough, and it doesn't have to be all that close, you'll see the plaster job they did on her face, which is now also two shades oranger than the rest of her. You'll see her sexy velvety satiny evening wear, which came right out of the wardrobe department. And finally you will see that fabulous hairdo, carefully molded and stiffened into a regal sculpture.
What you don't see is what she looks like the next time she steps out of the shower and gets on with her day, when all the gel and spackle are gone. Or what she looks like after she has tried in vain to replicate the effect she got at the salon. Or even what she looks like an hour after the shoot when the shellaqued curls begin to splinter into frozen locks, and facial oil has surfaced in the attempt to assist the body in ridding her visage of pore clogging goop.
When you look at that glossy "after", you are looking at one frozen moment. For that moment, supposedly, she is in her radiant glory, the absolute best she can ever be. The lie is that she will now always look that way. The truth is probably that she looked far more beautiful way before the "before" picture, before the marketing people got hold of her.
