The Collegian

Issue date: 4/23/09 Section: News

In the mid-1970s as the mother of two young children, Theresa Reid, owner of Attitudes Salon and a Pittsford, Mich. native, needed work to keep her family afloat. She only saw a few options open to her.

"You were a waitress or a hairdresser," she said. "Or you worked at a bank."

35 years later, Reid owns Attitudes, her third salon, located on Hillsdale Street, open six days a week. The salon has served Hillsdale students and residents for 12 years.

Like other salons, Attitudes smells of hair chemicals and nail polish, has warm lighting, mirrors dotting the walls and hums with music and talking. Reid's fight to establish her salon sets Attitudes apart.

Opening a salon in Hillsdale has proven anything but easy, she said. From local government regulations on Attitude's water intake to quibbles over signs and parking lots, Reid has held her own.

"If you want anything you have to fight," she said. "People don't realize it's a tough business. You're working your rear end off."

Five other women rent out workspaces in the salon - "mini-salon[s] within the salon," Reid said.

Stylists offer services from haircuts and dyes to more unusual hair care.

"One thing we learned at a hair show recently was nose hair waxing," Sarah Zimmerman, a five-year stylist at Attitudes said. "We've done quite a few."

"It's not just men who get their noses waxed either," Reid said.

Zimmerman, Attitudes' stylist and a Hillsdale native, has manicured pink nails, an impeccable tan and a pink flower in her hair. She said she enjoys her work at the salon.

"I love working here," she said. "The girls here are all really close - it's like a second family."

Freshman Sonny Gast called the salon's atmosphere warm and friendly.

"It's pretty chatty and cute and quaint," Gast said. "I plan to go there in the future for all my beauty needs."

Reid trained Zimmerman and several other women after they graduated from beauty school. Now she works alongside them, watching each one develop in her own rite. Reid says she couldn't be happier.

"When I see the girls I have trained building up their clientele, it gives me such satisfaction," she said.

She said she views the ladies she works with, including her daughter, as her motivation to keep fighting for her salon.

"If I can hang in here and eventually there is someone to [carry on]," Reid says, she feels encouraged not to give up.

Reid's clients range from students to older women with whom she has worked for more than 30 years.

"I've got one that's told me I can't die before she dies," Reid said, laughing.

She means it as more than a joke. Reid cuts childrens' hair and also styles clients for their viewings when they die, as a last act of service.

She takes this service seriously.

"There's a saying in the back, the person who wrote it envies us as hairdressers because we can make people change the way they feel about themselves," she said.

She said that's what the name Attitudes refers to.

"If you get your hair done and your makeup done you have a different attitude," she said. "It helps you."

For the future she hopes to install a shower and two treatment rooms to increase the salon's spa options.

Her clients have a few other plans in mind.

"Clients who come in want us to put in a coffee bar so they can come in after work and listen to us," Reid says, laughing.

She said she views every customer who walks through Attitudes' doors as someone she can help.

"Some people have jobs and some people have professions," she said. "Whenever you have a profession - that's who you are. This is who I am."

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