Hairy situation.

• Author: Klosterman, Chuck
• Position: The Ethicist - Column - Brief article

I'm a woman with a short, boyish hairstyle. Is it fair that I'm charged more for a haircut than a man with similarly short hair?

Yuki Murata, Santa Fe, New Mexico

IF YOU WALK INTO A SALON and request the same haircut that would be given to a man, you should be charged the same. But this assumes that these cuts are literally identical. The length of the hair isn't necessarily a reflection on the complexity of the cut: Anne Hathaway sometimes wears short hair, but I'm sure her cut takes far more time than the one given to Taylor Lautner.

Salon prices are built around a reasonable supposition: In general, women's haircuts are more...