Why Pert Plus Ruined Men, September 4, 2004

Sometimes I sit around and have deep thoughts. This is not one of those times. Instead, today I am thinking about a great American perversion – men who condition their hair. While conditioning my hair with Dove just now in the shower, I stopped to ponder the question. Why did I buy into the notion that conditioner was worth using? I mean, “Moisture Rich Dove’s” primary ingredient is water. Shower nozzle emitting water? Check. Looking deeper into the ingredient list, I can see there are many important things that are necessary to “bring just the right amount of Weightless Moisturizer” to my hair. Substances such as Dimethiconol, Lysine Hydrochloride, and my personal favorite, Methylchloriosothiazolinone. Clearly, we have a problem here.

Talking Head David Byrne once asked, “How did we get here?” and I think I know – Pert Plus. That’s right; the egg head geniuses over at Pert headquarters had a brilliant idea. I can just envision them sitting around the board room one day in the late 80’s, chain smoking as they fiendishly debated the next new product line. Finally, someone suggests mixing Pert and Pert Conditioner into one product. What could be better than mixing two of your products into one, marketing it to people who don’t need the second product, AND charging more for it than you did the original product that was needed? Whoever came up with Pert Plus probably got an instant raise on the spot (or instantly canned) because it’s pure genius.

The result of Pert’s bold venture into the male hair care market has completely changed the way men look at hair. Now, instead of just buying the Head & Shoulders (or what have you), men are purchasing two products. In my case, I have unthinkingly been purchasing Dove Conditioner to go along with my Suave Natural shampoo for years. Not once did I have an inkling of an idea about why I needed conditioner, what conditioner would do, and if there was any difference between different types of conditioners. Instead, I have been blindly programmed to buy two hair care products instead of one. Another victory for American capitalism.

To put this in context, I have to confess to an embarrassing moment. In my mid-20’s, I was dating this girl who, being a girl, believed in things like conditioner’s, professional salons, and hair care in general. All of this was new to me. In college, the girls I dated didn’t care if I had hair, not to mention if it was washed or even combed.[1] So as a young professional, I never cared much about my hairstyle.[2]

Enter a real woman, a person who actually cared about things like hair, a person that was willing to put up with my penchant to butcher my own hair with a $14 electric razor from Target, but obviously preferred that I have a more professional approach. Thus, as men are accustomed to make sacrifices for women they love, I agreed to go to the salon with her and get a professional cut.

I had never been to a professional salon before, only a barber shop. It simply wasn’t something that was in my worldview. Salons were for girls and gay men (and maybe metrosexuals), but certainly not straight guys. But, I went anyway.[3]

Little did I know that the “salon” is something out of science fiction. You have women whose heads are half full of strips of metal as they get the other half of their head is painted another color. Then there are women whose heads are totally encapsulated inside round metal and plastic helmets – all you can see is their body and usually a magazine. I thought I had entered the bar on Tatooine, not Bubbles in Pentagon City.

Still, I was not deterred. I told the receptionist what I wanted, sat down to wait, and then was whisked off to the hair washing area. This was completely new to me. Where was the bottle of water they were supposed to spray my hair with? What was this giant sink doing here? And why am I being pushed back into it? It was too late to object, so I went with it.

Amazingly, the hair washing experience was actually pretty solid. The woman who washed my hair did a very thorough job. I was ready for my haircut. But then, what’s that? I’m not done yet? Is my hair so dirty that it needs to be washed twice? Apparently so, because there she goes again with the water and the liquid and the washing. After a good rinse, she even gave me a head massage. It wasn’t until later, when I explained this whole thing to my waiting girlfriend (who rightly laughed her ass off), that I realized the attendant had conditioned my hair. Conditioned for what, I did not know. But whatever it was, I was ready for my first haircut by a professional salon hairdresser.

The haircut didn’t seem to take that long (and frankly, didn’t seem much better than what I could have done with my clippers), but it was professional. The hairdresser asked questions about what I wanted and things like that, which of course, my response was “You’re the professional asshole! You should be telling me what I should do with my hair!” Unfortunately, I couldn’t actually say that, so I used a series of grunts, nods, and deep growling noises to assent to issues of length and style. It was all I could do to stop myself from cursing this gadfly out for not knowing what the hell they were doing.

At any rate, at the conclusion of my “cut”, the hairdresser engaged in what is their primary job, hawking hair products. First, she used a sticky goo that she mixed with a jelly like substance to create a frothy mixture to rub into my head. Then it was explained why I needed the goo for hold and the jelly for style. Fortunately, the salon sold both products for the low-low price of $14.95 each. A small price to pay for style and hold, I was told. Being the soldier for capitalism that I am, I bought one of the products (I’m not made of money and I was more hungry than style needy), paid for my $30 hair cut and left, girlfriend in tow asking about the experience.

Really the salon experience touches on one of the great divides between men and women. When women go to a salon, they know what they want. They’ve either spent hours and hours combing their hair in a mirror, pondering tricky questions like length, parting, and tying it back, or they’ve spent hours looking at other women (in magazines usually) and wondering if they could do that with their hair. Thus, when a woman rolls into a salon, she usually knows exactly what she wants and simply has to tell the hairdresser what to do.

Men don’t work like that (at least not any of the men I know). Instead, most men spend a few moments towel drying their hair, they comb it to one side or another, maybe throw a little gel or mousse up there to keep things in place and then they bolt because they have more important shit to do than just stare into the mirror all day.[4] Thus, when we roll into a salon (which is happening more and more), we have no idea what we want aside from a “cut”.

Now I don’t know a lot about hairstylist academy (as in, I know nothing), but I can only imagine that the men and women that attend these schools are ingrained with the first rule (and most incorrect rule) of customer based service – the customer is always right.[5] This teaching has surely set hairstylists back a decade or longer because, simply, the customer doesn’t have a fucking clue, at least the male customer. So when a hairstylist asks, “What do you want to do today?” it should be no surprise if the guy in the chair either gets up and leaves or goes postal on the whole joint.

At any rate, since most guys I know are just on this side of “civilized”, they don’t get up and leave or get apoplectic about the question, they simply sit there wondering how long this is going to take while at the same time wondering how their girlfriends got so much power over them so quickly. Finally, when the hairdresser shows you her “work”, all you can do is nod, not because you like the cut, but because you know you’re that much closer to getting that burrito that you so desperately want.

You see, men have no means, no internal compass to measure what a good cut is. Sure, we know what a bad cut is (see Ross Perot). But when a hairdresser pops out that mirror to show you the back of your head (look – I made it even!), there’s little you can say or do because you’re so desperate to get out of there, that even if you could detect a flaw in the cut, you’re still not going to say anything about it because you want that burrito. So really, the whole exercise is pointless.

But men still go to the salon, even after the girl that led them there in the first place is long gone from the scene. And it’s really quite simple. Men are not these complex units that require hours and hours of thought and discussion to figure out. Instead, men go to the salon because an ex-girlfriend told them they should, liked it when they did and they want her back. Not necessarily the same girl, that is, but a girl like her – a girl who likes it when their man takes care of themselves by doing things like going to the salon. Or, I should say, guys want a girl who likes to believe in the illusion that their man is taking care of business by going to the salon – because we all know that men simply don’t have the mental makeup to actually understand what’s happening to them at the salon. And we all know, it is an illusion.

Which brings us back to the point; men use conditioner for the same reason. I don’t buy Dove’s Moisture Rich Color for medium to thick hair once a month because I believe in the value of “nourishing” my hair. That’s just a bunch of marketing bullshit that someone is getting paid hundred’s of thousands of dollars to come up with. No, instead, I purchase the conditioner because I’ve been taught to think that men who condition their hair are more likely to get a girl like the one I dated in my 20’s. That’s my true motivation and that’s the true motivation of every man I’ve ever met.[6]

Of course, the real question I want answered is where is that evil genius that invented Pert Plus and how can I get away with beating his ass? Because Mr. Pert is the one who did this to all men everywhere. If it hadn’t been for that commercial with the guy playing tennis at the gym explaining how he kept his luscious head of hair by using Pert Plus, millions of men everywhere would have never thought about ever picking up conditioner. Instead, men would have continued to blissfully spend less than $5 a month on hair care and never had to wade through an aisle at the CVS (Boots over here) wondering whether they should just buy the cheapest conditioner or if the more costly conditioner would be better for their hair. Which reminds me, I’m running a little low…

[1] Dating in college is the ultimate mulligan.

[2] By this I mean I obsessed about it incessantly.

[3] What was I supposed to do? She was cute and I loved her. She could have told me that men with shaved heads are sexy and I would have 86ed my hair.

[4] Things like playing Madden on the playstation or checking the score to the previous night’s Braves game.

[5] Anyone who has ever worked in a customer oriented job knows the customer is NEVER right. No sir, you may not have fries with that. We only sell pizza.

[6] In fact, even my friends that are married desperately horde their conditioner because they know if they ever run out, their wives will desert them without hesitation.