Entering the Ladmosphere

A few months ago I changed barbers, as I deemed my old one to have become lax. He had simply become too comfortable, and the time spent on my haircut had gone down along with the quality of the haircut itself. I took a risk and decided to try out a new barber, having wandered past a few to try to get an initial impression of each establishment. I ended up settling on a middle-aged man in Nørrebro, the area of Copenhagen that I live in.

Long story short, this barber has been a roaring success. I’ve had a few great haircuts from him; he is very attentive and has, until this week, never overstepped my barber boundaries, apart from an occasional desire to get at my beard.

— Now, I never let a barber near my beard as I deem them to be untrustworthy in the beard-taste department. While I can give them sufficient instruction for the haircut itself – and thus avoid any disasters – when it comes to the beard, I feel I have little control. I like a natural look and I, like any sensible man out there, abhor the straight-line, elevated beard (a kind of perfectly manicured facial hair that begins quite high up on the neck and is usually associated with the toxically masculine men that inhabit the ladmosphere).

Despite being perfect in every other way, this new barber has always suggested he do my beard line. But I am usually adept at batting off such advances, quickly stating that I do my own beard and don’t wish to pay the beard amount (about 20% extra on top of the actual haircut). 

This time, however, he got me, and the repercussions were great – after holding up the mirror behind me so that I could awkwardly approve the cut, his hand moved to his special beard trimmer and, before I could realise what he was doing, made a thrusting action towards the beard itself. As he did so, he said ‘beard?’, a question that became rhetorical due to the speed of his advancing trimmer. My beard life flashed before my eyes; there was simply no way that I could react in time. Before I knew it he had made a cut, beginning a too-straight line that, to my horror, I knew would result in a manospheric Andrew Tate beard (not to mention temporary social death).

Crestfallen, I walked out of the barbers, realising that our barber-recipient relationship would never again be the same, and that I would have to again search Nørrebro for a new cutter of hair. The conundrum of how to get a cheap haircut by a man of taste who understands the politics of hair and beard masculinity remains unsolved.