JOHN LEO'S BLOG

It's much creepier when hairdressers are supposed to report to authorities about what they think is going on in your home. Maine has just joined the list of states that have such programs. The Bangor News reports: "The idea is that women often open up to their hairdressers, so they should be alert and report problems." If so, hairdressers are now being trained to be snitches, using rapport and friendship with their customers to gather information for authorities–for the customers' own good, of course.

How would this work? A Maine cosmetologist told the News: "You might start offering a change [of hairstyle] and she says, 'No, he would not like that' or 'He would kill me if I cut my hair.' You start to think there might be some control issues." Or, as the blog "Nobody's Business" said: "The new practice would also seem to open up the possibility of massive misunderstandings and errors. For instance, if a customer says, 'My husband would kill me if I cut my hair,' I'd bet that 9 out of 10 times, it's a mere figure of speech, with no actual bodily harm implied." But the blogger added this: "Thinking it through, though, I can't really fault the program as long as there's no obligation on the part of the hairdresser to pass on suspicions to officials." One reader of the blog wrote this: "Like you, I certainly don't have any problem with handing out information–hairdressers don't need a state program to do that now if they wish. But there will be problems if Maine wants to turn stylists into domestic-abuse cops. As a former family therapist working in the state of Illinois, I was legally required to report any abuse I suspected to the authorities whether the family wished me to or not. Not pretty for people who wanted to work out their problems (themselves). . . . At the very least though, at least I was a professional trained to understand and work with these situations as well as to make risk assessments. Hairdressers, I think, are trained to work on hair."