Square—the mobile device payment system started by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey—recently compared the cost of haircuts for both men and women in major cities across the country by gathering data from thousands of transactions from the last six months from purchases that were categorized as “haircuts.”
No surprise—the city with the most expensive cuts is New York, which averages $73 for women. A close second is San Francisco where haircuts average $71 for women.
On the other side of the spectrum, the cheapest city to get a haircut is Denver, where haircuts average $48 for women and $32 for men (in other words, if you happen to be in Denver you should probably make some time to stop for a trim).
This data is right in line with which cities have the highest cost of living. The Council for Community and Economic Research last year named Manhattan as the most expensive place to live in the U.S. and San Francisco as the fourth most expensive city.
Here’s where the data gets interesting: While there’s a big discrepancy between how much men and women are spending for cuts in places like New York and Chicago, that difference is much less in West Coast cities. Haircuts for women are, on average, nearly twice as expensive in New York, Dallas and Chicago, but in Seattle and San Francisco, women’s haircuts are on average only about 40 percent more expensive than men’s.
Yes, apparently male vanity is alive and well on the West Coast. Guess we have all of those wannabe actors and Silicon Valley power plays to blame on the phenomenon.
Interestingly, there’s been a lot of debate during the last year about why men’s haircuts tend to cost less than women’s in the first place. Denmark’s Board of Equal Treatment, for instance, has been fining salons that charge more for men’s haircuts than for women’s. So maybe Los Angeles and San Francisco are just being progressive by charging men a heck of a lot when they sit down in the salon chair.
