Lee Suckling: What Kiwi barbershops are missing

Look to parts of the world where men's grooming is more culturally indispensable, and you'll see another side of the barber's world: a barbershop as a community hub. Photo / 123RF

Barbershops can change men's lives, writes Lee Suckling.

Barbershops work a little differently than your standard hairdresser.

You don't make bookings, meaning you are often waiting an hour on a Saturday in a small room with 20 other men. There's no hair washing, no cappuccino machine, no people sitting around with foils in their hair reading tabloids. Just a queue of guys sitting amongst tuffs of other men's hair, waiting for their own to be shorn.

That's the general barbershop experience in New Zealand. Look elsewhere to parts of the world where men's grooming is more culturally indispensable, and you'll see another side of the barber's world: a barbershop as a community hub.

Middle Eastern barbers are my favourite. The men of the Middle East are generally more hirsute than Westerners, so being well-groomed – beards shaped, backs waxed, eyebrows tamed – isn't vanity, it's a way of life. In the Middle Eastern countries I've been to it's common to see men getting manicures, having their eyebrows threaded, their necks shaved, their eyelids massaged. Middle Eastern men take the barbershop just as seriously, if not more so, as women in our country do regular visits to the hair salon.

The result of this is wonderfully talented barbers of Middle Eastern descent plying their trade in the West, including all over New Zealand (where many are from families who have come here for lifestyle and political reasons and as refugees). Thanks to Kiwi male hipsters and a general improvement in pride of the male appearance (call it the Queer Eye effect), their barbershops are thriving. However, they have potential to be even more.

This wave of serious barbershops is presenting New Zealand men with an untapped opportunity. It can give us a place to bond, to release the pressure boiling up inside of us, to feel understood. This is how barbershops can change men's lives: by becoming a much healthier version of the pub.

My neighbourhood in Wellington, being one that is very diverse (it is around 50 per cent people of colour, 50 per cent white), is plentiful with barbershops. There are at least five within walking distance of my house. They are all run by Middle Eastern and African men, who offer their skills (skin fades, nose-hair waxing, head massaging... you name it) for around $30 a visit. I go to my barbershop religiously once every two weeks, and there I have discussions about Middle Eastern politics or the burden of my mortgage, the All Blacks or my own mental state. It's one place I can go to truly relax and be unfiltered because of the environment these barbers have laid out for us.

I'd like to see us go a step further, even, and replicate the African-American barbershop model in New Zealand. The barbershop is the backbone of the black male community in the United States because it's one of the few places in society where men can gather together and feel safe as people of colour. When in a barbershop, they are not looked at as threatening. They are left to relax. This is a notion not generally bestowed on them in wider society.

The result is a safe haven that's only partially about grooming itself. Yes, hair is important – going to a black barbershop will ensure the patron gets a clean cut and leaves feeling their oats. But the real benefit of such a barbershop is to provide a place to decompress as a man. To talk to other men about seemingly non-consequential topics that sometimes lead to deep and meaningful conversations. To feel the catharsis of banter. To laugh. To engage with others and offer advice.

Try and find a place like this in New Zealand society where all of this can happen without alcohol, and where men will literally walk out looking and feeling better than when they walked it. It's unparalleled.

Men in this country are struggling. Our depression and suicide rates are high. We drink and fight our problems away. Home and professional pressures keep mounting. We are also blindly navigating the #MeToo era without a guide.

The Middle Eastern and African-American-style barbershop could be our saviour. A barbershop offers a socially-acceptable place for male intimacy and to be taken care of. Every man needs his hair cut, but barbershops are more than merely a place for that. They're where you can get a shape-up not just of your hair, but of your whole head.