Want Product

Just back from the hairdresser. I get charged more and more over time for less and less hair to be cut, but I made the decision several years ago to step up from the bloke’s option (i.e. the 10-minute cut at the barber) to the full-on hour at a proper hairdresser.

Now, this may be related to my realisation that visiting a proper hairdresser involves having an attractive woman running her hands langorously through my hair and massaging my head. It’s such a sensual treat that I wonder if I can just get the hairwash and skip the cut altogether.

Anyway, while I was being attended to I was also being entertained by the salon’s ‘TV station’, broadcasting a mix of pop videos and baffling hair-related infomercials.

It slowly dawned on me that every demonstration referred incessantly to ‘the product’. As in, ’spread the product evenly through the hair’…’apply the product in stages’…’work the product in’.

Of course, by this stage, I had no idea what ‘the product’ was, what it’s made from or what it’s supposed to do. But I wasn’t required to know. It’s a product. That’s all you need to know. Nod when someone offers it to you, or grunt and point if you have evolved that far. It is a product. You are supposed to want it. You are told you want it. That is its only function.

Want Product. Want Product.

Back at reception, I’m guilelessly asked ‘Do you want any products today?’. There’s not even an effort to identify what might be useful to me. There’s just the presumption that, after an hour* of being sold ‘the product’, I feel an overwhelming need to buy ‘it’.

‘It’ could be Peruvian Llama Milk, it could be Blackwater mud, it could be instant coffee. I’m not supposed to know, wonder or care.

Want Product. Want Product.

Still, I did enjoy having my hair shampooed. If only they realised what a great product that is, I’d be sold.

*Or, realistically, after a lifetime of being sold ‘it’.