practice portraits: my second-best hairstylist
spoiler: the first one is dead
I don’t know if ‘practice portraits’ will be a series, where “practice” is a sort of cop-out word. I mean they truly are practice portraits because I have very little experience with them, and the subjects for practice are usually people I know well enough and appreciate enough to want to write about them.
3-year-old me knew when a haircut was real bad, worse than every bowl cut my mom requested on my behalf. We started with a barbershop, but after enough inconsistencies, we tried a cheap salon. I didn’t even have to look hard enough in the mirror to know. The weight of my coconut head felt hollow. It was objectively hollow in the metaphorical sense because I didn’t actually care. I remember it just felt off that so much hair was lopped off.
I raced back down to my parents and asked if there was a way to “buy more hair”.
As soon as we got back home, I ran upstairs to the full body mirror in my parents’ room, turned away from it, and bent over forward to look at myself through my legs to see how short my hair was. After seconds of contemplation, I raced back down to my parents and asked if there was a way to “buy more hair”. Only until years later did I learn my dad raced back to the salon with some choice words for the stylist.
She may have been second-worst, but thankfully it only took another five years to meet the best: Chito. He deserves a whole separate entry, but for now it’s helpful to build context. It was a 45-minute drive to see him and his two dearest stylist friends that made up ‘Glamour Look’, Glenn and Edwin. But it was well worth the journey to see this trio of gay Filipino salonistas. Naturally, my mom’s request at the first appointment was the baby bowl cut. Chito responded by handing the scissors to my mom and telling her in tagalog, “Okay, you cut it then”. She was speechless. Everyone in the room laughed.
I knew zero tagalog then, but I don’t recall being nervous. I probably just wanted it to be done with. 8-year-old me would have to wait another four years before being self conscious about my hair anyway. That first appointment with Chito resulted in the exact opposite of a bowl cut, as if my hair was a medium for his petty but poetic spite, held together by gel, which began a decade of using hair product. I’d revert back to 7:3 part, but I do remember smiling like an idiot at the novelty of having spiky hair.
Chito was the best. He may have been perpetually late, but everyone enjoyed talking with him. By the time I was 12, however, he passed away due to brain cancer, but not after a successful surgery to remove the golfball-sized tumor and a celebration of his momentary recovery which filled a banquet hall. I remember after his passing that year, we had a project in art class for Día de los Muertos to draw skeleton characters with white crayon for the bones and whatever else to decorate the identity of whomever we were dedicating the piece to. How could I not pick Chito? He was the best.
Chito deserves to be more than just crucial context eventually, but the practice portraits I’ve taken for this entry are focused on Chito’s successor to cutting my hair: Glenn Rivera.
He is the hairstylist I’ll forever trust the most.
By now I’ve known Glenn for nearly twenty years. Where Chito knew what was best for me, what I’ve always appreciated about Glenn was the agency I was allowed (though it’d be unfair to preclude the agency Chito probably would’ve provided in a timeline without brain cancer). There was never a “bad” haircut from Glenn. He follows verbalized preferences and sample photos with clinical precision. He’d take stylistic liberties only if you let him. If I asked for the “same as last time,” he remembers the average of the last three sessions. To these ends, every appointment was a lesson in learning how to communicate for myself. Glenn is the lawful neutral genie. He is the hairstylist I’ll forever trust the most.
To be clear, I didn’t always see Glenn for my haircuts. During the recession around 2008, my family had to save on gas and find closer places for haircuts. We never went to the same person or place twice, and I remember every time I’d go somewhere, the person cutting my hair would remark how surprisingly thick my hair was. Glenn acknowledged this too, but where everyone else were lost in the Amazon Rainforest, Glenn had the layers of my hair mapped out in his brain like a Rainforest Cafe at the mall.
Even in recent years, I’ve had a gradually increasing anxiety about having to build a trusting relationship with a new hairstylist if I ever had to move out-of-state or if Glenn retires. So I’ve flirted with different barbershops here and there, but I keep coming back to Glenn because his consistency is unrivaled.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Glenn and Edwin are consistently part of the stylist crew that works on Filipino celebrities whenever they are in the Chicagoland area for some event or function. Their Glamour Look business doesn’t really have its own website or social media presence; they thrive off word-of-mouth among a deep network of suburban Filipinos, and all the tsismis (tagalog for ‘gossip’) that comes and goes from their salon.
Before emigrating from the Philippines, Glenn studied to be an architect. When I learned this from my mom a couple years ago, I was relieved somewhat about whether or not I’ll be an unsatisfied sack of shit at whatever career I find myself in after grad school. I’m privileged enough to be pleasantly surprised about how things turned out for me. I’m all the more privileged to know Glenn. Not having to guess what my hair will look like with each cut while still having the latitude to spice things up a little are boons I don’t take for granted.