While you're waiting for a shampoo or discussing whose turn is next, there's this warm female feeling of belonging.
By DVORA WAYSMAN‘... WE EAVESDROP shamelessly on all the conversations around us about a grandson’s upcoming bar mitzvah or a daughter’s wedding.’(photo credit: TNS)
No matter what age a woman has reached, there seems to be a need to bond with other women. Apart from family and best friends, there is an innate need at regular intervals to be somewhere with other women, even if you don’t know their names.When I was young and single, there were clubs where we’d meet (mostly to talk about boys, no matter what the club was called). In my previous incarnation as a young mother in Australia, a world away, there’d be a group at a playground, where between pushing prams and helping toddlers on and off swings and in and out of the sandbox, we’d talk to each other about inconsequential things, exchange recipes, joke about husbands and discuss the best kindergartens. When we came on aliyah and I was too busy working and raising a family to do much socializing even in brief snatches, I missed that casual bonding with other women. There was definitely something missing from my life.Now, much older, I’ve recaptured some of that feeling of female togetherness at my local hairdresser’s. It’s not one of those fancy-schmancy beauty salons where you have to make an appointment a week in advance and talk in hushed whispers as if you’re in some kind of a temple.On the contrary, it’s a casual drop-in place where there’s often a strident political argument raging between clients and staff, and no one is treated with kid gloves. But the one thing you can be sure of is that you’ll meet friends or at least acquaintances you’ve seen at the supermarket, walking their dogs, at the local synagogue or out doing early morning exercise.Mostly they are women around my age. The younger ones can get away with just a good haircut every six weeks, but we’re past the age where that casual, tousled look is flattering; we just look untidy. So whether we’re there for a shampoo and set, a hair color, a manicure or a permanent, we eavesdrop shamelessly on all the conversations around us about a grandson’s upcoming bar mitzvah or a daughter’s wedding. In fact, we usually join in.And it doesn’t feel like chutzpah to any of us. We’re women, we’re all undergoing some kind of beauty ritual, we’ve seen each other around, we kind of appreciate each other even if we’ve never been formally introduced.While you’re waiting for a shampoo or discussing whose turn is next, there’s this warm female feeling of belonging. Marilyn French, in her remarkable 1978 novel The Women’s Room, described a group of women who lived on the same block. “Their daily conversations drew them very close. Most of them would never again know with such detail and intimacy the elements of others’ lives.”Today it’s not like that with the women I see at Salon Steve, in Jerusalem’s Beit Hakerem neighborhood, but this little vanity I indulge in every week gives me more than just an improved appearance. For a modest sum I have the chance to spend an hour in an atmosphere of women. We have all reached an age where life hasn’t always been easy; where we’ve seen our children fight in the army; where we’ve survived aliyah and some of Israel’s wars; where some have sustained unbearable losses through divorce or death. But we are all women. We smile at each other and even if we’ve never actually met, what we are saying is: “I know you. I’ve been there. I understand!”The writer is the author of 14 books; her latest novel is Searching for Sarah.
