So the first time I walked into Oggi, it was with the attitude, You have scissors, I have hair; let’s do this. Dimly, I registered there was art on the walls, that I was being offered a glass of wine, that good music was playing. My hostess was impossibly good-looking, but luckily so much taller than I that it was easier to just keep my eyes grimly fixed straight ahead of me. It wasn’t until Andrea began to pepper me with questions that I noticed something unusual. Her interest in my hair was oddly impassioned, almost clinical. It felt as though I’d stepped into a TSA scanner. My interior needed to be reshaped, Andrea announced. The hair around my face needed flattening. My layers needed thinning. My ends were crispy.

For The New York Times