ABSTRACT
Joellen herself, small, trim, blonde-haired and in her late 50s at the time, was friendly and interested in the research from the start. Two attempts to find an appropriate salon and gain access for research failed. Then an acquaintance pointed in the direction of Joellen’s Hair Palace. The salon itself comprised a downstairs room with five styling stations, one front-wash and two back-wash basins at the back of the shop, and four old-fashioned hood-dryers arrayed along one wall. Sometimes the salon seemed quiet: unlike many high-street salons, no background music played. This, and the salon’s small size, meant that in practice, the intimacy of which Joellen and Bethan had spoken was often out of the question. The community served by Joellen’s was older and less racially mixed than is the case for England as a whole, and these characteristics were reflected in the salon’s clientele, who were mostly older folk, and overwhelmingly white British.
