Hotel hair dryer rage

Why do wall-mounted hair dryers in many hotels come without any kind of attachment to fit on the end? Ladies, you know what I’m talking about. Blow-drying your hair without a concentrator or diffuser attachment is a perilous proposition, raising the prospect of frizziness, split ends and/or the dreaded “big hair” (unless you’re one of those women with naturally perfect hair – bitch). For most of us, contending with these unwieldly beasts and their crude, aimless airflow is a futile exercise. We might as well go stick our freshly showered heads behind the jet engine of a Boeing 747 or under the hand dryer in a public bathroom. Gahh!

I’m not convinced that this is purely a matter of cost-cutting by stingy hotel owners. In fact, the fancier the hotel, the more rubbish the wall-mounted hair dryer:

That’s right. Even the nice joints with the plush bath robes and marble bathrooms can’t deliver. I love that these top-notch hotels cater to the overweight, middle-aged business executive who needs to join a conference call while he attempts to defecate yesterday’s lobster lunch by ensuring there’s a phone handset installed within an arm’s reach of the toilet. And yet the arsehats who design these “luxury” hotel rooms can’t budget the $1.28 needed to purchase one unit of mass-produced plastic hair dryer attachment. It’s a small thing, but one that could potentially make a big difference.

Looking around the web, I get the impression that the wall-mounted hair dryer industry hasn’t made much progress since 1983. Did you know they’re still selling this model on the market:

Yikes. I wonder what being pummelled with a rectangular jet stream of hot air feels like. At least now I understand how Simon Cowell gets his look:

The truth is that having to drag your own decent, heavy hair dryer around in your luggage is a big pain in the neck. Hotels clearly need a wake-up call (no pun intended) but the question is: how can we get the message across? Given that most hotels are just as bad as the next one, I feel I don’t have much power as a consumer and can’t effectively vote with my money. Part of me wants to comment on the shambolic hair dryer situation in every single TripAdvisor hotel review I ever write until someone sits up and takes notice. I won’t be holding my breath, though. I can just picture the response:

TripAdvisor employee #1: Urgh. We got another hair dryer review.
TripAdvisor employee #2: It must be that crazy bitch again.
TripAdvisor employee #1: The woman with the big, frizzy hair?
TripAdvisor employee #2: Yeah, that’s the one.

But seriously, something needs to be done about these craptastic hair dryers. Women of the world unite!

Is it a failure of feminism that a liberal-minded, educated woman like myself is jumping up and down and demanding action about a hair care-related product? I don’t think so. The reality is that a lot of women take pride in their appearance – even (quelle horreur!) the most self-confident or educated women.  Most of us choose to have longer hair than men and many of us like to style it. It’s just how we roll. At the same time, women represent a huge slice of the travel market and we’re increasingly the ones paying for our stays. So isn’t it time that the hotel industry realised this and started to genuinely cater for us, too?